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THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



■^'^^o- 




William Evvart Gladstone 

From a painting by the late Sir John Everett Millais, P.R.A., considered by members of 
the Gladstone family to be the most truthful and satisfactory likeness of any. The por- 
trait hangs in the dining-room at Hawarden Castle. 



Frontispiece 



) \ ■f,'-'' (, /■ 



THE STORY OF 



GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



BY 



JUSTIN McCarthy 

AUTHOR OF " A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES," " THE FOUR 
GEORGES," ETC. 




THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
1897 

Ail rigJits reserved 




UA .r6 



Copyright, 1897, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINOTCMJJ 



WarSuoolr '\^tess 

J. S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. "The Gledstanes" ....... i 

II. Eaton and Oxford . . . . . . . 8 

III. Gladstone's Introduction to Public Life . . 25 

IV. Gladstone's First Parliament • . » • 33 
V. Gladstone in Office 49 

VI. Gladstone's First Book . . . ... -65 

VII. Gladstone's Marriage TJ 

VIII. The Free-Trade Struggle 97 

IX. The Free-Trade Struggle; Member for Oxford 104 

X. Don Pacifico — Death of Sir Robert Peel. . 116 

XI. The Neapolitan Letters 129 

XII. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill . • . -145 

XIII. Gladstone and Disraeli as Rivals . . • 156 

XIV. Gladstone and Bright . . . . . .169 

XV. A Coalition Government i73 

XVI. The Crimean War- 180 

XVII. The Ionian Islands 198 

XVIII. The Repeal of the Taxes on Education , . 216 

XIX. The American Civil War 236 

XX. Gladstone supports Popular Suffrage . . 247 

XXI. The Irish State Church and Land Tenure 

Questions 266 

XXII. National Education; Other Reforms . . .280 

XXIII. The Irish University Question . . • .285 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 



XXIV. The Alabama Question . . o , „ 

XXV. The Tide turns ...,., 

XXVI. Gladstone in Retirement .... 

XXVII. Achilles recalled ...... 

XXVIII. The Two Sphinxes, Ireland and Egypt 

XXIX. War with the Boers, The Franchise Bill, A 
New Election ...... 

XXX. Home Rule . . . . . . 

XXXI. " The Long Day's Task is done " . 

XXXII. Gladstone's Busy Leisure . . „ , 

XXXIII. Penultimate ....... 

XXXIV. " The Grand Old Man " . 

INDEX , 



301 
311 

324 
335 

351 
358 
381 

399 
418 

428 

433 



LIBRARY OP CONGRESS - BINDING RECORD 
Call No. DA563.4.M2 Date 3-15-79 



Author McCarthy 



Title STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



Vol. Copy No. of vols.. 

D161-79-171 

Date Block & Item 



Reblnd 

Specs. - 

7-56 (rev V72) 



Ji 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

Portrait of W. E. Gladstone . . . Frontispiece 
William Ewart Gladstone. From a Painting by George 

Hayter 43 / 

Thomas Babington, Lord Mac aula y. Maull & Fox, London 67 ) 

W.E.Gladstone. From a Photograph by Maull & Fox, London 136 

John Bright as he appeared in 1853. Maull & Fox, London 169 ■ 
W. E. Gladstone in 1857. From the Painting by Mr. George 

Frederick Watts, R.A 193 , 

W. E. Gladstone. From a Photograph by Samuel A. Walker 207 
W. E. Gladstone. From a Photograph by Vincent Brooks 

Day & Son 224 

Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and 

Empress of India 283 / 

Henry Edward, Cardinal Manning. Elliott & Fry, London 312 ^ 
The Houses of Parliament. From a Drawing by M. George 

Montbard, Paris 325 - 

W. E. Gladstone. From the Painting by Hader . . . 352 ' 

Catherine Gladstone . . ' . . . . . • 400 -^ 

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT 

PAGE 

The Gladstone Crest and Motto . . . Title-page 
Mr. Gladstone's Birthplace, 62 Rodney Street, Liverpool . 4 
Sir John Gladstone, Mr. Gladstone's Father .... 6 
Eton from the Thames. From a Photograph by the Lon- 
don Stereoscopic Co. 13 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



by Elliott 



Oxford. Christchurch College. From a Photograph by 
the London Stereoscopic Co. .... 

George Canning. From an old Engraving 

Frederick Denison Maurice. From a Photograph 
& Fry, London 

The Duke of Newcastle 

Duke of Wellington. From an old Engraving 

Lord Lyndhurst. From an old Engraving 

Daniel O'Connell. From an old Engraving . 

Earl Grey. From an old Engraving 

Sir Thomas Acland. From a Photograph by Maull & Fox, 

London 55 

The House of Commons as it appeared in the Old Par- 
liament Building, burned 1834. (This cut appeared in 
Sir Walter Besant's " London," published by F. A. Stokes, 
23d Street.) 58 

Lord Lyttelton. From a Photograph by Maull & Fox . . 78 

Henry N. Gladstone and Herbert J. Gladstone as Boys. 
Photographed from Water-color Originals painted by Mary 
Severn 80 

View of Hawarden from the South. From a Photograph by 

A. P. Monger, London loi 

The Rt. Hon. Charles Pelham Villiers, M.P. From a 

Photograph by Elliott & Fry 105 

Sir Robert Peel. Nops, Electrotyper. From an old Woodcut 106 

One of Mr. Gladstone's London Residences, No. 6 Carlton 

Gardens. A. P. Monger, London .110 

Mrs. Gladstone. Portrait by E. R. Saye 114 

John A. Roebuck. From a Photograph by Maull & Fox, 

London . . . . . . . . . . .120 

Sir Alexander Cockburn. Basano, London . . . .125 

John Henry, Cardinal Newman. From a Photograph by Mr. 

H. J. Whitlock 146 

Roundell Palmer, First Earl of Selborne. From a Pho- 
tograph by Maull & Fox, London 150 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi 

PAGE 

Edward G. S. Stanley, Fourteenth Earl of Derby. From 

an Engraving by Mr. D. J. Pound . . . . . -154 

Benjamin Disraeli. From an old Portrait representing liim 

entering Parliament . . . . . . . . icS 



Windsor Castle. From a Pliotograph by Wilson, London 
George H. Gordon, Fourth Earl of Aberdeen. From an 

Engraving by Mr. D. J. Pound ..... 
Camillo Benso, Count di Cavour. Signor Brogi of Florence 

George Cornewall Lewis 

Richard Bethell, Baron Westbury. From a Photograph by 

Maull & Fox 

Edavard George Earle Lytton Bulwer, Baron Lytton 
George I. (Georgios I.), King of Greece. Unknown Photo 

graph 

Earl Russell (Lord John Russell) .... 

Richard Cobden. From an old Engraving 

John Stuart Mill, i 806-1 873. From a Photograph by the 

London Stereoscopic Co 

Samuel Wilberforce. i 805-1 873 

Henry J. Temple, Viscount Palmerston. From an old 

Woodcut ......... 

Robert Lowe. From a Photograph by Maull & Fox 

John Bright in Later Life. From a Photograph by Mackin 

tosh & Co., Kelso, Scotland 

Osborne House, Isle of Wight. From a Photograph by 

Firth & Co., Reigate, England 

Stafford Henry Northcote, Earl of Iddesleigh. From 

a Photograph by the London Stereoscopic Co. 
The City Hall at Geneva. Unknown Engraver . 
Buckingham Palace. From a Photograph by Valentine, Dun 

dee, Scotland 

William Edward Forster. From a Photograph by Elliott & 

Fry, London . 

Spencer Compton Cavendish, Eighth Duke of Devonshire 

From a Photograph by the London Stereoscopic Co. . 



175 

183 
185 
188 

196 

202 



213 
218 

237 
242 

251 
263 

272 

291 

297 
298 

307 
316 
320 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Granville George Levison-Gower, Second Earl Gran- 
ville. From a Photograph by the London Stereoscopic Co. 333 
Charles Stewart Parnell. From a Photograph by William 

Lawrence, DubHn 340 

John Dillon. From a Photograph by Russell & Sons . . 344 
Lord Frederick Cavendish. From a Photograph by the Lon- 
don Stereoscopic Co. . 346 

Sir Charles Dilke. Elliott & Fry 355 

Mr. Justin -McCarthy, M.P., in 1879. London Stereoscopic 

Co 359 

John Morley. London Stereoscopic Co 367 

Joseph Chamberlain. From a Photograph by Elliott & Fry . 374 

William E. Gladstone 385 

Mr. Gladstone's Handwriting 389 

The Official Residence on Downing Street. Monger of 

London ........... 394 

William Henry Gladstone. Maull & Fox .... 408 

William Henry's Son, Present Heir. Webster of Chester . 410 

Herbert Gladstone. Russell & Sons 416 

Rev. Stephen Gladstone. Elliott & Fry .... 422 
Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, with all the Children and 
Grandchildren. From a Photograph by Mr. Watmough 

Webster, of Chester 425 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



oXXc 



CHAPTER I 

" THE GLEDSTANES " 

I THINK I may take it for granted that Mr. Glad- 
stone is the greatest EngUsh statesman who has 
appeared during the reign of Queen Victoria. 
This, indeed, seems to me a statement of fact and 
not a question for argument. We may all have our 
different opinions as to the policy involved at this 
time or that in the statesmanship of Mr. Gladstone. 
Some of us may admire him more in his earlier 
days, some of us in his later, or even his latest. 
He may be charged with inconsistency — a charge 
which has naturally to be made against any great 
statesman, for the essence of statesmanship con- 
sists in the recognition of imminent tendencies and 
actual facts. Nobody can possibly be called a 
statesman who starts in life with a pack of political 
nostrums which he proposes to apply inveterately 
to the cure of every constitutional malady in the 



2 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

State. A mind like that of Mr. Gladstone is inex- 
orably compelled to go on studying the changing 
conditions of things, and is absolutely prohibited 
from applying remorselessly the remedies of the 
day before yesterday to the troubles of to-day. 
Many years ago John Bright said to me that Glad- 
stone was " always struggling towards the light." 
Such mio-ht indeed be the statement of Gladstone's 
whole career. He has been " ever a fighter," like 
Robert Brownings hero — ever struggling towards 
the light. I propose to tell, as best I can, the story 
of his rich and noble life. Of course I can tell it 
only from the outsider s point of view ; but I may 
perhaps say in excuse of my enterprise that I have 
followed and studied with the deepest interest, 
since I came to know anything of public affairs, the 
career of Mr. Gladstone — that I sat in the House 
of Commons with him for many years, and that I 
was fortunate enough to have much interchange of 
ideas with him — and I may perhaps say I was 
admitted to his friendship. 

William Ewart Gladstone is an Englishman only 
by birth. He was born on the 29th of December, 
1S09, in Rodney Street, Liverpool, one of the chief 
residential streets of the citv — a street which was, 
and still is, much occupied by leading merchants, 
barristers, and physicians. But Mr. Gladstone's 
family came from Scotland. Many generations 



"THE GLEDSTANES" 3 

ago the family bore the name of Gledstane. My 
friend Mr. George W. E. Russell, in his monograph 
on Gladstone, which belongs to the series called 
" The Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria," a very 
delightful little book, explains the meaning of the 
name. The family had had their abode from very 
early times in Lanarkshire. " The derivation of 
the name," says Mr. Russell, " is obvious enough 
to any one who has seen the spot. Gled is a hawk, 
and that fierce and beautiful bird would have found 
its natural home among the stanes, or rocks, of the 
craggy moorlands which surround the fortalice of 
Gledstanes." "As far back as 1296," Mr. Russell 
tells us, " Herbert De Gledestane figures in the 
Ragman Roll as one of the lairds who swore fealty 
to Edward I." By degrees the family estates be- 
came less and less, and at last became practically 
nothing at all. The latest surviving son of the 
family removed into a neighboring town and set 
up in business as a maltster. By the time this 
man's grandson had been born the family name 
had been changed into Gladstones. Yet a little 
later and it became that which we all know as one 
of the most illustrious names in English history — 
Gladstone. By something like an accident, John 
Gladstone, then the eldest son of the house, having 
been sent to Liverpool on business, attracted the 
attention of a leading corn merchant of the town, 



4 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



a Highland Scotch woman 



and by his advice settled there for good. He be- 
came one of the great merchant princes of Liver- 
pool, a member of Parliament, and a baronet. He 
was a pure Lowland Scotchman, and he married 

The pair had six 
children, and 
the third son 
was William 
Ewart Glad- 
stone. John 
Gladstone was 
a man of great 
ability and en- 
ergy — a man 
to make his 
way through 
any difficulties 
and to win the 
honor and re- 
spect of any 
community. 
In the public and political sense he stood in some- 
what the same relationship towards his son William 
Ewart Gladstone that the first Sir Robert Peel oc- 
cupied with regard to his son, the great Sir Robert 
Peel. 

One of William Gladstone's elder brothers I re- 
member well in Liverpool, where as a very young 




Mr. Gladstone's Birthplace 

62 Rodney Street, Liverpool 



"THE GLEDSTANES" 5 

man I spent several years. This brother, Mr. Rob- 
ertson Gladstone, was a man of singular energy 
and force of character, of genuine ability both in 
politics and finance, a powerful and impressive 
speaker, a sort of rough-hewn model for his 
younger and much greater brother. He was a 
man of somewhat uncouth appearance and eccen- 
tric ways, about six feet seven inches in stature, 
and people turned their heads to look after him 
in the streets of London, although, of course, in 
his native Liverpool he was too well known to 
be stared at. He had, as I have said, eccentric 
ways, but he had no ways that were ignoble or 
unmanly. He was as straightforward a politician 
as ever lived. He had begun life as a Tory, but 
he gradually became a Liberal, and, indeed, an 
advanced Radical. If he were living in our time, 
he would be a powerful and uncompromising op- 
ponent of Jingoism. It was the common belief in 
Liverpool, and probably is the common belief there 
still, that Robertson Gladstone assisted his brother 
William in the preparation of his budgets when 
William was aorain and aoain Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer. He was eloquent in a strong, unshapely 
sort of way, with a half-poetic gleam of feeling glanc- 
ing every now and then through his speeches. 

The eldest brother. Sir Thomas Gladstone, passed 
through life without advancing from his old-world 



6 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

politics, and made no particular mark upon his 
time. I have often thought that nature resolved 
to make a decided advance in the family history 




Sir John CjLadsidni-, 



by the creation of Robertson Gladstone, and that, 
not yet quite satisfied, she tried again and gave 
William Ewart Gladstone to the world. 

Sir John Gladstone, the father, was one of those 



"THE GLEDSTANES' 



7 



men who, like his illustrious son, seem destined 
never to grow old. There is an interesting de- 
scription given of his ways with his children which 
may perhaps help to account for the extraordinary 
aptitude for debate of William Ewart Gladstone. 
One of- his friends has told us that nothino- was ever 
taken for granted between Sir John Gladstone and 
his sons. He started and kept alive a constant 
succession of arguments on small topics and on 
large. His family circle appears to have been what 
the King of Navarre in Shakespeare's play says his 
court shall be — "a little Academe." Every lad 
was put on his mettle to defend his own case or to 
damage the case of another. It was all done in the 
most perfect good humor and with the full and un- 
flagging enjoyment of those who took part in it. 
It must have been capital preparation for the 
Oxford Union and for the debates in the House of 
Commons. Sir John Gladstone was a great friend 
and admirer of George Canning. Young William 
Gladstone was sent to begin his education at the 
vicarage of Seaforth, a place in the neighborhood 
of Liverpool. Here he had as one of his fellow- 
pupils the late Dean Stanley, of Westminster. The 
friendship between these two lasted to the end of 
Dean Stanley's useful, refined, and gracious life. 
Gladstone did not remain long at Seaforth. At the 
age of eleven he was sent to Eton. 



CHAPTER II 

ETON AND OXFORD 

It would not, perhaps, be easy to convey to any 
untravelled American an idea of the glamour and 
the fascination which Eton exercises over the mind 
of a schoolboy who has any feeling for the pictu- 
resque, the venerable, and the poetic. Eton College 
stands within the very shadow of Windsor Castle. 
England has nothing to show more beautiful than 
the landscape which spreads around on every side. 
There is witchery in the river, in the woods, in the 
old historic Castle. One might almost say that the 
whole current of English history streams on with 
that noble river. I am not certain, so far as my 
travel goes, whether anything quite like those 
Windsor landscapes, including with them the his- 
torical memories and associations, can be found 
anywhere outside England. So far as one can 
judge, the whole effect impressed itself deeply on 
the mind of the schoolboy William Gladstone. All 
throup-h his life he could become fired with enthu- 
siasm at the mere mention of Eton and its studies 
and its memories. He seems to have worked hard 



ETON AND OXFORD 9 

as a student, and, indeed, earned a certain amount 
of unpopularity by his persistence in regarding 
serious study as part of his business and his duty. 
He was untiring at Greek and Latin, and occupied 
his hoHday time in studying mathematics. He 
never, I beHeve, became a great classical scholar in 
the narrow and pedantic sense. Probably no one 
whose scholarship took that limited and practical 
form ever really appreciated the beauty of the great 
authors whom he studied. You cannot appreciate 
Shakespeare if you are always occupied in trying to 
parse him. Young Gladstone soon came to have 
the most magnificent appreciation of the soul and 
spirit and form and phrase of the great Greek and 
Latin authors whom he loved. He persisted while 
at Eton in being an unostentatiously pious and re- 
ligious student. He would not join in or counte- 
nance any mockery or levity about things which he 
had been taught to regard as sacred. Yet there 
was nothing whatever of the "prig" about him, and 
his force of character even then was such that he 
compelled the most light-minded to respect him 
and his ways. Nor would he stand any frolicsome 
cruelty to dumb animals. " He stood forth," says 
Mr. Russell, " as the champion of some wretched 
pigs which it was the custom to torture at Eton 
Fair on Ash Wednesday, and, when bantered by 
his schoolfellows for his humanity, offered to write 



lO THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

his reply in good round hand upon their faces." 
This is the sort of boy whom even schoolboys 
must admire. 

The merits of the system of education and of 
discipline adopted at Eton have been the subject 
of much criticism and complaint. The education 
given there is said by some commentators to con- 
sist of nothing but Latin and Greek, and of these 
superficially taught, and without any attempt to 
instruct the learners in mathematics, physics, or 
metaphysics. I shall not attempt to go into the 
subject further than to accept it as highly probable 
that Eton is, or was in Mr. Gladstone's school- 
days, a place where a boy who loved learning 
could acquire as much knowledge as he wanted, 
but where a boy disinclined for severe studies was 
left free enough to indulge his indolent inclina- 
tions. A man of eminent authority was once 
asked whether a boy would be looked down upon 
at Eton for being industrious in his studies. The 
answer was significant : " Not if he could do some- 
thing else well." Such a school would probably 
suit the peculiar mind and tastes and aptitudes of 
a boy like young William Gladstone. He would 
soon find out for himself what studies suited him 
best, and he was free to apply himself to these 
with all his might. On the other hand, a school 
with different modes of training might merely force 



ETON AND OXFORD II 

a pupil along some broad and common way 
without giving any opportunity to his natural 
peculiarities to assert themselves. Certainly Mr. 
Gladstone's predilection all through his life was 
rather for what may be termed literary studies 
than for mathematics or physics or metaphysics. 
One thing to be said in favor of Eton is that all 
its best and most distinguished students have 
looked back upon it with love and affection dur- 
ing the whole course of their lives in the outer 
world. " Floreat Etona " may be called the motto 
of the school. It is the pious wish of every stu- 
dent of Eton whom I have ever met. Such a fact 
in itself speaks for the school " with most miracu- 
lous organ," whatever its past or present defects 
of training or of discipline. It was probably just 
the place from which young Gladstone would 
draw all the best it could give. 

Sir Roderick Murchison, the famous naturalist, 
has left it on record that Gladstone was " the 
prettiest little boy that ever went to Eton." Most 
of us can testify from our own knowledge that Mr. 
Gladstone lately is the handsomest old man who 
ever went to Eton or anywhere else. Visitors to 
Eton are shown, of course, the name of Gladstone 
carved into a wall or a woodwork here and there. 
But, naturally, no one ever goes to any place 
where a famous man once lived without being 



12 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

shown his name carved, as it is confidently af- 
firmed, by his own hand. 

At Eton Gladstone's closest friend was that 
Arthur Hallam to whose gifts and virtues the late 
Lord Tennyson has inscribed his " In Memo- 
riam/' Among his other mates were some whose 
names will still be remembered in America — Fred- 
erick Tennyson, for example, brother of the poet 
and himself a poet ; Alexander Kinglake, the author 
of " Eothen,'' and the historian of the Crimean 
War; James Bruce, afterwards the famous Earl 
of Elgin ; Charles Canning, afterwards Earl Can- 
ning and Viceroy of India, the " Clemency Can- 
ning " of the Indian Mutiny — a nickname then 
given to him in scorn by the panic-stricken vota- 
ries of a policy of slaughter, but now remembered 
to his honor and to his glory. 

William Gladstone was not much of an athlete, 
as the term was then understood. He did not 
care for games of any kind, but was very fond of 
sculling, and kept a boat for his own use, and he 
was then, as ever since, a tremendous walker. He 
walked very fast, and he walked great distances. 
His delight was to wander about through all the 
lovely places surrounding Windsor, in company 
with a few boys of his own age and of his own 
tastes. Outside this inner circle of his intimates 
Gladstone was not well known at Eton. He seems 



ETON AND OXFORD 



13 



to have been neither popular nor unpopular — a 
somewhat curious beginning in life for one whose 
strength and energy of character made it in his 
after years impossible for any one to avoid form- 
ino- a very distinct opinion for or against him. 









Eton from the Thames 

(From a photograph by the London Stereoscopic Co.) 

He distinguished himself decidedly in the debates 
of the " Eton Society " and in the editorship of the 
" Eton Miscellany." Mr. Russell tells us that the 
Eton Society in Gladstone's day was " a remark- 
able group of brilliant boys." " Its tone was 
intensely Tory. Current politics were forbidden 



14 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

subjects, but political opinion disclosed itself 
throuQ:h the thin disa^uise of historical or academi- 
cal questions. The execution of Strafford and 
Charles the First, the characters of Oliver Crom- 
well and Milton, the ' Contrat Social ' of Rousseau, 
and the events of the French Revolution, laid bare 
the speakers' political tendencies as effectually as 
if the conduct of Queen Caroline, the foreign 
policy of Lord Castlereagh, or the Repeal of the 
Test and Corporation Act, had been the subject 
of debate." We all know the tremendous earnest- 
ness which schoolboys throw into the discussions 
of their debating societies. Probably Mr. Glad- 
stone was never more thoroughly in earnest at 
the very zenith of his statesmanship, and when a 
speech from him might decide the fate of a min- 
istry or a policy, than he was when he addressed 
the Eton Society on the subject of popular educa- 
tion. He was the means of introducino- Mr. Kino^- 
lake to this Eton Society. He took a prominent 
part in the starting of the " Eton Miscellany." He 
became its editor and its most prolific contributor. 
He was actually the author of a humorous ode 
to the shade of Wat Tyler! 

Shade of him whose vaUant tongue 
On high the song of freedom sung ! 
Shade of him whose mighty soul 
Would pay no taxes on his poll ! 



ETON AND OXFORD 



15 



— and much more, in the same elaborate strain 
of the mock-heroic. Only the other day, it may 
be said, this humorous versical freak of a school- 
boy was rescued from oblivion by a serious Tory 
critic, who brought it up as conclusive evidence 
that Mr. Gladstone had been from his earliest 
years the consistent advocate of anarchy and 
rapine. Such a critic may well remind us of 
that contemporary of Swift who took the trouble 
to point out that there could be no such places 
and people in the world as those which Lemuel 
Gulliver professed to have visited in his travels. 

Gladstone remained at Eton until the end of 
1827. He then studied for a few months with 
private tutors, and he became fond of gymnas- 
tics, of turning, and of wood-carving. He still 
delighted in his rambles through fields and woods, 
in his long, rapid walks, and in his chosen com- 
panionships. In October, 1828, he went up to 
Christchurch, Oxford. There were many young 
men then at Christchurch who afterwards made 
distinguished careers for themselves in the Church 
and in law and in political life. Among the under- 
graduates at other colleges in Oxford were Henry 
Edward Manning, the late Cardinal Archbishop 
of Westminster; Sidney Herbert, afterwards one 
of Gladstone's closest friends and colleagues in 
Parliamentary life; Robert Lowe, afterwards Lord 



i6 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



Sherbrooke ; and Sir George Cornewall Lewis, 
a man of wonderful gifts and acquirements, curi- 
ously forgotten by the Englishmen of to-day — 
a man who, but for his unhappy defects of voice 
and articulation, might have been one of the 
greatest speakers in the House of Commons. 




Oxford. Christchurch College 

(From a photograph by the London Stereoscopic Co.) 

There was some doubt in Gladstone's family as 
to whether he ought to be sent to Oxford or to 
Cambrids^e. Now, it would seem to most of us 
that there was an absolute necessity, for the sake 
of historical fitness, that he should have been 
sent, as he was sent, to Oxford. The entire at- 
mosphere of the place, steeped in its peculiar 
traditions and its mediaevalism, seemed exactly 
suited to the whole temperament and genius of 



ETON AND OXFORD 1 7 

the youthful Gladstone. Members of the two uni- 
versities are constantly arguing as to which of 
the rivals can show the more splendid beadroll 
of great students. Into this controversy I have 
no inclination to enter. Each can produce a 
magnificent record ; but I should think an un- 
biassed observer might be inclined one way or 
the other, according as his taste and tempera- 
ment led him to the scientific, or to what I may 
call the literary and historical, field of study. 

Certainly Mr. Gladstone seems to me absolutely 
in his place as a student in Oxford. He was a 
hard student during his career as an undergrad- 
uate, and he led a very temperate life. He did 
not object to a supper or a wine party, but he 
was distinctly abstemious in the use of wine, and 
his example in this w^ay produced a good effect, 
not only on those who worked with him, but also 
on some of those who came after him. Natu- 
rally, he took a leading part in the proceedings 
of the Union Debating Society, of which he first 
became Secretary and afterwards President. In 
the days of Arthur Pendennis self-conceited mem- 
bers of the Union Debating Society lived in the 
firm belief that the Prime Minister of the time 
watched with keen attention the doings of the 
youths in the Union, with the object of picking- 
out fit persons to become Cabinet Ministers. 



l8 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

The Premier at the time when Gladstone deHv- 
ered his maiden speech in the Oxford Union 
might, with great judgment, have turned his 
attention in that direction. Predictions after the 
event are, as we all know, of little account; but 
Bishop Charles Wordsworth, as he afterwards 
was, who heard the speech, said that " it made 
me, and I doubt not others also, feel no less sure 
than of my own existence that Gladstone, our 
then Christchurch undergraduate, would one day 
rise to be Prime Minister of England." 

The University of Oxford is a world in itself, 
and might in Gladstone's early days be described 
as a world all to itself. Its general principles 
were those of devotion to the State Church and 
to Toryism — a Toryism which, as Mr. George 
Russell says, was of a romantic and old-fashioned 
type, as far as possible removed from the utilita- 
rian Conservatism of a later day. " The claims 
of rank and birth," says Mr. Russell, " were ad- 
mitted with a childlike cheerfulness. The high 
function of government was the birthright of the 
few. The people had nothing to do with the 
laws except to obey them." Mr. Gladstone him- 
self, a great many years after, when speaking at 
the opening of a Liberal club in Oxford in the 
December of 1878, said: "I trace in the educa- 
tion of Oxford of my own time one great differ- 



ETON AND OXFORD ig 

ence. Perhaps it was my own fault, but I must 
admit that 1 did not learn when at Oxford that 
which I have learned since, to set a due value 
on the imperishable and the inestimable principles 
of human liberty. The temper which I think too 
much prevailed was that liberty was regarded 
with jealousy, and fear could not be wholly dis- 
pensed with." Still, as will be easily understood, 
there were as many different phases of Toryism 
at Oxford, even then, as there were minds and 
temperaments. In a great centre of education 
there cannot possibly be that stolid monotony of 
opinion and of conviction which may be found 
sometimes among the church-goers and the Tories 
of some country village. Then, again, each of 
the colleges in Oxford, as in Cambridge, had its 
own peculiarities, its own traditions, its own class, 
and its own aspirations. Christchurch College in 
Oxford was, perhaps, the most aristocratic in its 
members and in its tastes. It seems to have 
become, for some unknown reason, a training- 
school for Prime Ministers. Its history would 
well have justified the ideas of Arthur Pendennis 
and his friends. Christchurch Colleo-e orave dur- 
ing the century seven Prime Ministers, not includ- 
ing Mr. Gladstone himself, to English government. 
Among these were Lord Liverpool, George Can- 
ning, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Derby, Lord Salis- 




20 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

bury, and Lord Rosebery, Gladstone's own suc- 
cessor in the office of Prime Minister. 

In his second term Mr. Gladstone was elected 
a member of the Oxford Union Debating Society, 
in which he made the speech so 
glowingly commended by Bishop 
Wordsworth in the words we 
have already quoted. He de- 
fended Catholic emancipation in 
the debates of the Union, but he 
GEORGE Canning opposcd the rcmoval of Jcwish 
disabilities, and he argued against the immediate 
abolition of slavery, although he urged that every 
preparation ought to be made for its gradual ex- 
tinction by the teaching and training of the slaves 
so as to fit them for self-mastery and for citizen- 
ship. These views, as we shall see, he afterwards 
expressed in Parliament when he came to be a 
member of the House of Commons. In the 
debates of the Union he again and again op- 
posed the very moderate movements towards 
political reform which at that time were held by 
many people to be well-nigh revolutionary. Yet 
even in young Gladstone's strongest speeches 
against the reform movement he seems to have 
taken good care not to commit himself to any 
unqualified objection to reform as a principle. 
His mind, indeed, would appear to have been a 



ETON AND OXFORD 21 



sort of mirror of the general mind of Oxford — 
a veneration for the past, a love of tradition, 
a romantic sentiment of reverence for the ancient 
institutions of the country, and yet a mind open 
to see the inevitable tendencies of the future. 

Gladstone worked very hard for the Oxford 
Union, of which he became first the Secretary 
and afterwards the President. He was studying 
hard for classical honors and for divinity. He 
studied Hebrew as well. He worked for four 
hours in the early day and then went out for ex- 
ercise, chiefly walking and boating, with also a 
certain amount of what we now call athletic train- 
ing — more, at least, than he had taken in his Eton 
days. Then he attended classes and lectures and 
resumed his solitary readings for many later hours. 
He always read for two or three hours before bed- 
time. Nothing whatever was allowed to interfere 
with the course of his reading and his studies. 

Not content with his studies and the work of 
the Union Debating Society, he founded and 
organized a debating society all of his own device 
and construction, which he named the Oxford 
Essay Club, but which became after a while col- 
loquially named the " Weg," a title taken, as will 
readily be seen, from Gladstone's own initials. 
Frederick Denison Maurice, afterwards famous 
in Enghsh Church history, mentioned in 1870 




22 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

that " the circumstance of belonging to a small 
society at Cambridge brought me into a similar 
one at Oxford, founded by Mr. Gladstone, to 
which otherwise I never should have been ad- 
mitted." " The members of the Weg," says Mr. 
Alfred F. Robbins in his " Early 
Public Life of Mr. Gladstone," 
" assembled in each other's rooms 
in turn to hear an essay from 
its occupant, and it is owing to 
this circumstance that so excel- 
frederick denison lent an idea has been preserved 
^ , of what Mr. Gladstone was like 

(From a photograph by 

Elliott & Fry) whevi at the University." 

Gladstone also studied hard in mathematics, but 
the study seems to have left less impression on his 
style of thought than any other of his readings 
and his trainings. Of the original members of 
the Weg, I believe Mr. Gladstone himself and 
his friend, Sir Thomas Acland, to be the only 
survivors. At one of the meetings of this society 
Gladstone read an essay which endeavored to 
explain and define the belief of Socrates in im- 
morality. 

I have heard quite lately that Mr. Gladstone 
himself was rather disposed to underrate the 
amount of interest which he took, while at Oxford, 
in out-of-door pursuits. One or two of his few 



ETON AND OXFORD 23 

surviving contemporaries may have been heard to 
declare that Gladstone held as good a place among 
the Oxford athletes of his time as he did among 
the hard-working students. It is possible enough 
that in later days the mind of the great statesman 
and the great student may have lost its memory 
of the physical exercises which were less a pas- 
sion of his temperament and his nature than the 
working of the intellect and the development of 
the brain. One can only say that it is hard to 
believe in Mr. Gladstone turning his attention to 
anything, physical or intellectual, without becom- 
ing more or less successful in the attempt. 

It is a curious fact that when his office of Presi- 
dent of the Oxford Union came to an end he 
was succeeded by his friend, afterwards Cardinal 
Manning. It is a curious fact, too, not unworthy 
of record, that among the friendships which he 
made at Oxford was that of Mr. Martin Farquhar 
Tupper. The general public now has lost all 
memory of Mr. Tupper. Tupper was, however, 
a man well known in his day. He was the author 
of a book called " Proverbial Philosophy," a book 
which probably had at one time a larger circula- 
tion than any of the novels of Dickens and 
Thackeray, or the writings of Carlyle, or even the 
essays of Lord Macaulay. It was a book com- 
posed altogether of gentle platitudes, each platitude 



24 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

carrying with it a well-meaning moral purpose. 
The genial platitudes ceased to interest after a 
time, and Tupper faded out of the minds of even 
the dullest among us. I remember a friend tell- 
ing me, many years ago, that he had just come 
from a literary party where he had been sitting 
between the two extremes of poetry: between 
Alfred Tennyson on the one hand and Martin 
Tupper on the other. Tupper first adored Glad- 
stone and wrote poems to him, then for a while 
he turned against him, and afterwards went back 
to his first love. Gladstone was always kind to 
Tupper, invited him to his house, always read 
and answered his letters (which must have been 
terribly boring work), and proved that he had never 
forgotten his old associates at the University. 

In December, 1831, Gladstone took his double 
first class. 



CHAPTER III 

Gladstone's introduction to public life 

Gladstone was an earnest student of the Bible 
and of patristic literature in those boyish days, 
as he continued to be down to his latest years. 
He left Oxford before the full influence of the 
movement led by the late Cardinal Newman had 
begun to assert itself in the place. His strong 
inclination then was to enter the Church, and he 
pressed his father hard to allow him to become a 
clergyman. But Sir John Gladstone, shrewd and 
keen-eyed man of the world as he was, saw, no 
doubt, in the genius of his son something different 
from that which could find its best course in the 
career of an ecclesiastic. In Mr. Gladstone's time 
strict obedience to the wish of a father was an 
essential part of a son's duty. Gladstone gave 
up his desire to enter the Church, but, as every 
one knows, he has taken during all his life a deep 
interest in Church history and in subjects of theo- 
logical controversy. Early in 1832 he left Oxford 
and went to Italy for the first time — to that Italy 
which in after years he loved so much and served 

25 



26 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

SO well. It seems in the fitness of things, too, 
that young Gladstone should have passed directly 
from Oxford to Italy. After a few months of 
Italian wandering he was called back from Italy, 
as Milton had been, by a sudden appeal to him 
to enter on a political and a Parliamentary career. 
His time had come, and it found him out. Those 
who have watched with ever-increasing interest 
the later years of his public life must know, of 
course, through what changes of opinion he strug- 
gled on to be a great political reformer. But 
there may be many to whom it would be a sur- 
prise to hear that the invitation which Mr. Glad- 
stone first received was given because it was 
understood that he was one of the rising influ- 
ences that made against reform ; that he was de- 
termined to keep back if he could the onward 
movement of the popular cause, and that he was, 
as Macaulay afterwards described him, the hope 
of the stern and unbending Tories of that day. 
The very manner of his invitation to enter Parlia- 
ment would be an anachronism and an impossi- 
bility in our time. 

The invitation came from the then Duke of 
Newcastle. The Duke represented the old-fash- 
ioned principle which set up the landlord's absolute 
right over the votes of a constituency in which he 
possessed the most of the land. The passing of 



GLADSTONE'S INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC LIFE 27 

the Reform Bill had shaken the strength of the old 
feudal principle. According to that principle, the 
great landlord of any region where there was a 
Parliamentary constituency claimed the right to 
return to Parliament anybody whom he thought fit 
to select for the representative position. This 
Duke of Newcastle, about whom I am now speak- 
ing, had asserted his claim in the most frank and 
simple fashion. He will be remembered in English 
history chiefly by the manner of this assertion. 
" Have I not," he asked, "a right to do what I like 
with my own ? " — " my own " being in this case the 
constituency of Newark, one of the boroughs which 
fell within his territorial sway. The Duke was a 
good-natured, honest, somewhat thick-headed sort 
of a man, and he could see nothing absurd what- 
ever in a ducal landlord setting up such a claim. 
The Duke was naturally greatly alarmed by the 
movements of the epoch. The Reform Bill of 1832 
introduced for the first time the great middle 
classes and the o-reat middle-class cities and towns 
of England to the right of representation in Parlia- 
ment and the right of the suffrage. It abolished 
many of the old " rotten boroughs," as they were 
called, and the "pocket boroughs," and therefore 
struck sharply at the privileges of the territorial 
magnates. The Reform Bill, although the Duke 
of Wellington described it as "a revolution by due 



28 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

course of law," set up in fact but a very limited 
suffrage, and left the vast mass of the working 
population entirely outside the pale of constitu- 
tional representation. But it seemed at that time 
to all Troy minds like a measure of portentous 
revolution. On the other hand, ardent Liberals 
wrote and spoke as if the Reform Act were destined 
to bring about a millennium. 

The Duke of Newcastle looked around every- 
where for some rising man capa- 
ble of representing Tory interests 
in the borough of Newark. His 
son, Lord Lincoln, had been a 
school and college friend of young 
William Gladstone, and had heard 
The Duke of New- ^im deliver his speech against re- 
CASTLE form, to which I have already 

referred. Lord Lincoln recommended Mr. Glad- 
stone to the Duke. The Duke eagerly accepted 
his suggestion. Mr. Gladstone was summoned 
home from Italy, and thus the greatest English 
reformer of our time came into practical politics 
as the advocate of the party which set itself 
against any and every manner of reform. Even 
under these conditions Mr. Gladstone could not 
bring himself quite down to the level of the Duke 
of Newcastle. In his address to the electors of 
Newark he declared that he was bound by the 




GLADSTONE'S INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC LIFE 29 

opinions of no man and no party, but said that he 
felt it his duty to watch and resist that growing 
desire for change which threatened to produce, 
" along with partial good, a melancholy preponder- 
ance of mischief." The Duke of Newcastle proba- 
bly would not have admitted that there was any 
good, even partial, to qualify the melancholy mis- 
chief. Mr. Gladstone declared in his address that 
if Englishmen were to look for national salvation 
they must make it their first principle that the 
duties of governors are strictly and peculiarly re- 
ligious, and that legislatures, like individuals, are 
bound to carry throughout their acts the spirit of 
the high truths they have acknowledged. Mr. 
Gladstone said a good deal about the condition of 
the poor and the remuneration of labor. From the 
opening to the close of his career he was always 
inspired by a sincere and active compassion for the 
condition of the hardly worked and very poor. It 
seems somewhat strange to us now to learn that 
part of the address touched upon the question of 
slavery. It has to be remembered that slavery still 
existed, a. tolerated principle and practice, in certain 
of the English colonies. Its abolition was one of 
the results of that Reform Act which the Duke of 
Newcastle and Mr. Gladstone so much condemned. 
The Gladstones had large properties in the West 
Indies, including, of course, a considerable slave 



30 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

population, and when England emancipated her 
slaves by paying off the planters, the Gladstone 
family naturally, and quite rightly, came in for a 
considerable share of the national purchase-money. 
Liverpool was a town which had a good deal 
to do with the slave system in the colonies, and 
in my early days I remember hearing from old 
playgoers of a declaration flung by Cooke, the 
great tragedian, in the face of an indignant 
theatre in Liverpool which had ventured to hiss 
him for some oddity in his behavior, that " there 
was not a stone in the walls of the town which 
was not cemented by the blood of African slaves." 
Mr. Gladstone, however, did not present himself 
in his address as an advocate of slavery. He 
contended that the system was sanctioned by 
the Scriptures, but he insisted that the slaves 
were to be educated and prepared for gradual 
emancipation. That was as far as any English- 
man, not a member of an abolitionist organization, 
would have gone at the time. The Newark con- 
test was fought out with much stubbornness and 
a good deal of passion, and the two Tory candi- 
dates were elected, Mr. Gladstone's name being 
at the head of the poll. This, it should be 
remembered, took place at a general election — 
the first general election since the passing of the 
Reform Act, the general election which was to 



GLADSTONE'S INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC LIFE 31 

create the first Reformed Parliament. The Re- 
formed Parliament met on January 20, 1833, ^^''d 
Mr. Gladstone took his seat in the chamber over 
which he was destined to maintain for so lono- 
an almost absolute ascendency. 

He was then twenty-two years of age; he had a 
splendid physical constitution, a striking and hand- 
some face, a mass of dark hair and splendid radi- 
ant eyes. His face was pallid, almost bloodless, 
and a passing observer might have fancied that 
the young man was wanting in health. The 
fancy, however, would have had no foundation, 
for then, as through all his career, Mr. Gladstone's 
intellectual faculties were sustained by an indomi- 
table physical constitution. I am myself strongly 
of opinion that Mr. Gladstone distinctly improved 
in appearance as his life went on deepening into 
years. I cannot, of course, remember him as he 
was in 1833. I think I saw him for the first 
time some twenty years later. But although he 
was a decidedly handsome man at that time, I 
do not think his appearance was nearly so strik- 
ing or so commanding as it became in the closing 
years of his career. I do not believe I ever saw 
a more magnificent human face than that of 
Mr. Gladstone after he had grown old. Of 
course the eyes were always superb. Many a 
stranger, looking at Gladstone for the first time. 



32 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

saw the eyes, and only the eyes, and could think 
for the moment of nothing else. Age never 
dimmed the fire of those eyes. 

We have now Mr. Gladstone at the very outset 
of his Parliamentary career — a young man 
endowed with the rarest gifts, having the sure 
prospect of ample fortune, with friends among 
the highest families of the day, and with a brill- 
iant reputation earned at school and college. He 
seemed destined, as indeed he was destined, for 
nothing but success. He came into the House 
of Commons at a peculiar crisis in its history. 
The old order was changing, giving place to the 
new; the whole situation could not but have 
made a profound impression on Gladstone's 
thoughtful and half-poetic mind. It must soon 
have been borne in upon him that the days of 
privilege were gone, and that the days of political 
and social equality were fast coming in. Few 
men could then have expected, even among the 
friends who admired him the most, that he was 
destined to play a supreme part in the expansion 
of the new era. 



CHAPTER IV 

Gladstone's first parliament 

This Reformed Parliament, in which Mr. Glad- 
stone made his first appearance, had some very 
remarkable men in both its chambers. The 
House of Lords was, of course, entirely unaffected 
by the changes which had so pro- . 

foundly altered the character of ^|^^ 

the Representative Chamber. Re- ^^^^B 

form does not touch the House of * ^^5 
Lords. The right of a man to ""''^^^^^ 

be a peer consists either in the . Mfl^^^Hk. 

fact that he is the eldest son of duke of Wellington 

his father, who was a peer, or that (From an ou engraving) 
he is called up to the peerage by the gracious sum- 
mons of the Sovereign. The most conspicuous 
figure in the House of Lords at the time was that 
of the Duke of Wellington, the victor of Water- 
loo. The Duke of Wellington was a consummate 
soldier, although he had none of the dazzling 
genius of the great Napoleon. Napoleon was a 
man born for conquest and for aggression. The 
Duke of Wellington was the very symbol of 

D 33 



34 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

cautious and hard-headed resistance. Napoleon 
was really defeated by himself, and by himself 
only. " The meteor of conquest," as Byron says, 
" allured him too far," and he fell into cureless 
ruin. The Duke of Wellington held a place in 
the House of Lords and in the public mind of 
England which might be considered absolutely 
unique. He was not a great statesman ; he was 
not, indeed, a statesman at all in the true sense of 
the word. Apart from his gifts and instincts as 
a commander, he was not a man of any intellect. 
But he was a thoroughly honest and disinterested 
man. It was well known that his life was abso- 
lutely devoted to the service of his Sovereign and 
of his country. His bitterest enemy never imputed 
to him a sordid or even a selfish motive. He had 
good sense enough to see who were the men upon 
whom, from his own point of view, he could best 
rely for guidance. Sir Robert Peel was then and 
forever after one of those men. The influence 
of the Duke of Wellington in the House of 
Lords was always, of course, a Tory influence; 
but it belonged to a form of Toryism which was 
willing in the end to recognize facts and to 
make the best of any situation. When once it 
was made clear to the Duke that he could not 
maintain some particular Parliamentary position, 
he had no more hesitation in withdrawing from it 



GLADSTONE'S FIRST PARLIAMENT 35 

than he would have had in his days of battle 
about retreating from some line of defence which 
it must soon become impossible to hold. 

The next most prominent figure in the House 
of Lords was that of Lord Brougham, the great 
advocate, the great popular agitator, the un- 
doubtedly great orator — a man devoured by a 
perfect passion for hard work, a man of inex- 
haustible energy and vast resources, whose weak- 
ness consisted in an unconquerable desire to 
master every subject and to become first in every 
field. Lord Brougham is curiously forgotten by 
Englishmen and Americans of to-day. Yet his 
might truly be called a great career. He put 
himself at the head of every movement for political 
or social reform. He was an orator of a some- 
what rough, unhewn, and even uncouth order, but 
his power over the feelings of his 
audience was a living fact admit- 
ting of no possible question. 

Another eminent man in the 
House of Lords, much greater 
as a mere lawyer than Lord 
Brougham, but with nothing like lord lyndhurst 
Brougham's political influence, was Lord Lyndhurst. 
Lyndhurst was on the Tory side of affairs, but he 
had mental enlightenment enough to inspire him 
sometimes to go a little in the way of genuine 




36 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

reform. Brougham and Lyndhurst, on different 
sides in politics, had become members of the House 
of Lords by the same sort of regulation process. 
Each had served his party well both as lawyer 
and as politician, and each, when his party came 
into power, had been rewarded for his services by 
the office of Lord Chancellor, which takes with 
it, although not always at the very moment, a 
seat in the House of Lords. 

In the House of Commons which Mr. Gladstone 
entered for the first time the two most remarkable 
men were, beyond all question, Sir Robert Peel 
and the great Irish tribune, Daniel O'Connell. 
Mr. Gladstone was very soon drawn by instinct 
and by sympathy into a sort of devotion to Sir 
Robert Peel. There was a certain affinity between 
the characters and the gifts of the elder and the 
younger man. Sir Robert Peel had begun life 
as a stern and unbending Tory, and naturally a 
rigid advocate of the system of protection. He 
had already been won over, by the growing force 
of his own conscientious convictions, to become 
the Parliamentary instrument of Catholic emanci- 
pation. Later on, as we shall see, he was destined 
to break away from his Tory party and to establish 
the system of free trade. Peel was undoubtedly, 
what Mr. Disraeli called him, a " great member of 
Parliament." He was a great Parliamentary orator 



GLADSTONE'S FIRST PARLIAMENT 37 

and debater. No man in modern times, except 
Mr. Gladstone alone, has ever swayed the House 
of Commons by argument and by eloquence as Sir 
Robert Peel did for many years. Like Mr. Glad- 
stone, he had a magnificent voice, a voice strong, 
clear, flexible, and sweet, making itself heard with- 
out strain or effort in the farthest 
row of the farthest gallery, and at ^tltL^ 

the same time capable of express- HP^IL 

ing the most delicate tones and ^^^47 

semi-tones of feeling and of per- Bk^'s?^ 

Mr. O'Connell had but lately ti^^^^^i^^ 

Daniel O'Connell 

made his way into Parliament, 
partly by his own tremendous energy and popularity 
in Ireland, partly because Peel's conscience had 
converted him, as I have said, to the principle 
of Catholic emancipation, and Peel had brought 
over the Duke of Wellington ; and partly because 
the Duke of Wellington himself had made up 
his mind that further resistance to Catholic eman- 
cipation would mean civil war, and he declared 
that he had seen war enough in his time, and 
would have nothing to do with civil war, anyhow. 
O'Connell was a great figure in the House of 
Commons, as he had been a great figure at the 
bar and on the popular platform. He, too, pos- 
sessed a voice of marvellous strength and music. 



38 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Disraeli, in rendering justice to Sir Robert Peel's 
voice, says that nothing like it had been heard 
in his time, " except, indeed, the thrilling tones 
of O'Connell." Mr. Gladstone was early drawn 
towards O'Connell by a kind of sympathy, greatly 
as the two men differed on many political ques- 
tions. Gladstone was in favor of the principle 
of Catholic emancipation even in his most anti- 
reforming days of ardent youth, and he found 
much that was attractive in O'Connell's genial 
bearing. I talked with Mr. Gladstone some years 
ago about his early memories of O'Connell, and 
he spoke with a certain modest gratefulness of 
O'Connell's kindness to him when a voun^ man 
just entering on Parliamentary life. He told me 
several stories about O'Connell's earnestness and 
energy in trying to redress this or that individual 
grievance, and of the trouble which he had taken 
for such purposes, and of the generous warmth 
with which he accepted and put to proof Mr. 
Gladstone's offer of co-operation. I asked Mr. 
Gladstone about Mr. O'Connell's eloquence in the 
House of Commons, and he told me it was so 
great and so commanding that he was unwilling 
even to offer a criticism upon it, but that his 
impression was that of the three great opportuni- 
ties which O'Connell enjoyed, the bar, the plat- 
form, and the House of Commons, the House of 



GLADSTONE'S FIRST PARLIAMENT 39 

Commons was not his greatest success. I asked 
Mr. Gladstone what he beheved to be O'Connells 
principal characteristic. He made me an answer 
in a magnificent phrase which does honor to the 
memory of O'Connell. He said : " I think O'Con- 
nell's principal characteristic was a passion of 
philanthropy." 

Lord John Russell was undoubtedly one of the 
leadino- men of the new Parliament. He had 
been the principal worker in the preparation and 
the carrying of the Reform Bill. He was a man 
of great ability and of remarkable power as a 
keen, incisive debater. He never, perhaps, rose 
to the full height of genuine oratory, but I at 
least have not heard a man in my recollection 
who could get the better of him in the keen 
sword-play of debate. Lord Palmerston, although 
he had held office more than once, and just at 
this moment was Secretary of State for Foreign 
Affairs, had not yet made any real mark on pub- 
lic life. Lord Palmerston's influence was of the 
slowest growth, and when it came at last it came 
suddenly and almost as in a flash. Mr. Stanley, 
afterwards Lord Stanley, and later still Lord 
Derby, was one of the commanding figures in 
the House of Commons. He was a man of great 
energy and eloquence, possessing a rhetorical flu- 
ency which had not, perhaps, been equalled in a 



40 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

modern English Parliament until Mr. Gladstone 
came to the front. He had a power of "phras- 
ing," if I may use such an expression, which told 
with immense effect on the debates of the House 
of Commons, where a happy expression, an epi- 
gram that "catches on," an epithet that clings to 
the public memory, is often much more effective 
than the soundest argument. Mr. Stanley had 
on more than one occasion stood up in direct 
Parliamentary antagonism to Daniel O'Connell, 
and, according to the opinion of the majority, had 
not been worsted. He had taken a great part in 
the passing of the Reform Bill, although he was 
an aristocrat of the aristocrats. Later on he quar- 
relled with the Liberals over their policy as regarded 
the Irish State Church, and he afterwards settled 
down into the position of an avowed Tory. Mr. Dis- 
raeli had not yet found a place in the House of Com- 
mons. But Macaulay, and Grote, the historian of 
Greece, and Edward Bulwer, the novelist, were there. 
The Prime Minister at this time was Earl Grey, 
who had been, one might say, the parent of the 
Reform Bill. He, of course, sat in the House of 
Lords, and therefore had little influence over the 
course of events in the House of Commons. The 
real leader of an English Government must always 
be in the Representative Chamber, He is like a 
commander-in-chief. His directions and his com- 



GLADSTONE'S FIRST PARLIAMENT 



41 



mands must be ready at a moment's notice. Many 
a crisis occurs in the House of Commons on which 
the fate of a measure or of a Ministry may depend, 
and when there is no time to send messeno-ers 
across town to hunt up the nominal Prime Minis- 
ter whose House of Lords has probably dispersed 
hours and hours before. Down to the present day 
English Governments continue to have nominal 
Prime Ministers in the House of ^— ^^^^^^^^ 
Lords, but such a Prime Minis- Hn^^^^^^l 
ter, whatever his abilities and his ^Hj^i ,.■.«■>, »jp||K 

like that of a commander-in- earl grey 

chief who is twenty miles away (From an oM engraving) 

from the field of fight. Probably before long the 
system will be changed altogether, and it will be- 
come a matter of course that the Prime Minister 
shall be a member of the House of Commons and 
not the House of Lords. The real Prime Minis- 
ters within my memory have been Lord John 
Russell, Lord Palmerston, Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. 
Gladstone. All these, of course, sat in the Repre- 
sentative Chamber. The leader of the House of 
Commons and of the Liberal party at the time 
when Mr, Gladstone first entered Parliament was 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Viscount Al- 



42 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

thorp„ It is perhaps hardly necessary to explain 
to most readers that the title in Lord Althorp's 
case, as in so many others, was what we call a 
" title of courtesy," and merely indicates that the 
bearer of it is a son of a peer, and, not being a 
peer himself, is free to be elected to the House of 
Commons. But even very intelligent and well- 
informed strangers are often much puzzled by our 
various titles and the difficulty of understanding 
why this man can and this man cannot be a mem- 
ber of the House of Commons. I remember ex- 
plaining at some length to a stranger many years 
ago that Lord John Russell could sit in the 
Representative Chamber because he was only the 
son of a duke and was not a duke himself, and 
that the Marquis of Hartington was entitled to sit 
as an elected representative for precisely the same 
reason. But, then, my friend asked me, what 
about Lord Palmerston ? He surely cannot have 
a father living, and how does he come to sit here ? 
The explanation was easy enough. Lord Palmer- 
ston's title belonged to the Irish peerage, and an 
Irish nobleman, if he is not chosen by his peers to 
represent, them in the House of Lords, is quite free 
to be elected a member of the House of Comm.ons. 
Lord Althorp, then, at this time led the Govern- 
ment and the Liberal party in the Representative 
Chamber. He was not a man of much statesman- 




William Ewart Gladstone 

(From a painting by George Hayter) 



GLADSTONE'S FIRST PARLIAMENT 43 

like ability, but he was a good party manager, and 
when, later on, the death of his father compelled 
him to enter the House of Lords, the party suf- 
fered by his absence from the real battlefield. 
Lord Althorp had at this time a considerable ma- 
jority of the House of Commons behind him. But, 
on the other hand, the Tory minority under Sir 
Robert Peel was all compact and of one mind, and 
was willing to follow a leader whose sagacity, 
strength, and debating power were beyond any 
question or cavil. A writer who describes the 
events of this opening Parliament says that " to one 
danger, indeed, Ministers were exposed, a danger, 
however, which they themselves had created : their 
performances must either fall greatly short of what 
they had promised, and produce disappointment, or 
they must throw themselves, to support their popu- 
larity, into a career of dangerous and unconstitu- 
tional change on which they did not voluntarily 
care to enter. The public agitation which they 
had created and fostered in the great mass of the 
people for the purpose of carrying the Reform Bill 
had produced extravagant expectations that the 
meeting: of a Reformed Parliament would neces- 
sarily be followed by the redress of everything 
deemed a grievance and the cure of everything 
called an evil." This is, indeed, a very correct 
description of the foremost peril to which the 



44 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Ministers found themselves exposed at the first 
. meeting of that Reformed Parhament from which 
so much was expected and so much was dreaded. 
Mr. Gladstone came quietly and modestly into 
the debates of the session. He first spoke on 
what might be called a local rather than a public 
question. Later on the Government had been 
strongly pressed by some of its own supporters 
to deal with the condition of slavery in the colo- 
nies. The new Colonial Secretary, Mr. Stanley, 
who had just resigned the office of what I may call 
Irish Secretary, brought forward a series of resolu- 
tions intended to lead up to the extinction of 
slavery in England's colonial possessions. It was 
in the course of the debate that followed that 
Mr. Gladstone delivered his first really important 
speech. Yet it was not a speech on the broad and 
general subject, but rather a reply to a sort of 
attack made by Lord Howick, afterwards Earl 
Grey, on the management of Sir John Gladstone's 
plantation in Demerara. Mr. Gladstone warmly 
vindicated his father from any charge of counte- 
nancing hard dealing with the slaves on his planta- 
tion. Every one felt the most genial sympathy 
with the young man called on to defend in his first 
important speech the conduct of his father as an 
owner of property in slave labor. Two or three 
weeks after this Mr. Gladstone spoke again in the 



GLADSTONE'S FIRST PARLIAMENT 45 

same debate, but dealt with the general subject. 
He expressed just the same views as he had already 
set out in his election address to the constituency 
of Newark. He was entirely in favor of the ex- 
tinction of slavery, but he held that emancipation 
must come gradually and after proper steps had 
been taken for the education of the slave. From 
all that I have read or could hear I am not inclined 
to believe that the speeches made anything more 
than a passing and a personal impression on the 
House of Commons. Certainly I have no reason 
to suppose that they gave to the House any idea 
of the great powers which the young orator was 
destined before very long to display. I remember 
talking years ago to some very old members of the 
House of Commons who told me that for some time 
Gladstone's speeches were listened to with only the 
respect which the House always pays to youth, mod- 
esty, and knowledge of the subject under discussion. 
In Gladstone's early days, as in subsequent days, 
the House detested "bumptiousness" — self-sufh- 
ciency, "cheek," ostentation, and the unwarranted 
assumption of any manner of superiority. Many 
experienced members of Parliament consider it 
rather an inauspicious omen if a young man should 
begin with a very successful maiden speech. The 
idea is that probably the young man has, to use a 
colloquial phrase, put all his best goods in the shop 



46 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

window, and that nothing is left inside. There are 
notable instances that way, and notable instances 
also the other way. The younger Pitt's maiden 
speech was a great success. The maiden speeches 
of Sheridan and Disraeli were ghastly failures. 
There is not much of a theory to be established 
either way. But I am inclined to think that Glad- 
stone's earlier speeches did not put much of the 
goods in the shop window, and did not, indeed, 
give any idea of the wealth of deposit that was in 
the shop itself. It is a curious fact that Mr. Dis- 
raeli, Gladstone's lifelong rival, happening at that 
time to meet Gladstone in London society some- 
where, and hearing people talk about him, wrote 
to his sister and gave her his opinion that " that 
young man has no future before him." It is well 
to remember that Cicero thought Julius Caesar 
would never make a soldier. 

The truth probably is that from the very first 
Gladstone had an instinctive, intuitive knowledge 
of the conduct which best suits the House of 
Commons. That conduct undoubtedly is the 
policy of waiting until your real opportunity 
comes. It is almost always a mistake to try to 
create an opportunity — to thrust yourself into 
any controversy in the hope that you can make 
an eloquent speech. The one fact which young 
Gladstone soon impressed upon the House of 



GLADSTONE'S FIRST PARLIAMENT 47 

Commons was the fact that he would not intervene 
in a debate unless he had something to say. 
Thus from the very outset he made himself sure 
of the ear of the House. Everybody knew that he 
would not get up to talk for the sake of talking, 
and that when he had said all that he wanted to 
say he would wind up with a few effective sen- 
tences and then sit down. We have to take Mr. 
Gladstone's speeches in this early part of his Par- 
liamentary career very much on trust. The reports 
in Hansard, the semi-ofificial records of the House 
of Commons debates, give only leading men in the 
first person, and Gladstone had not at that time 
advanced to the dignity of the first person. So we 
read only that the honorable member for Newark 
said that he would not at that late hour of the 
sitting detain the House too long with the observa- 
tions he had to make — and so on. We can gather, 
however, even from these oblique and colorless 
reports, that Gladstone's style was even then some- 
what diffuse and rhetorical, that it was usually very 
happy in its phrasing, that it was very fluent, and 
that the manner of the speaker was animated with- 
out being too dramatic. Mr. Gladstone, in fact, 
did not take the House of Commons by storm, and 
did not try to do anything of the kind. His great 
Parliamentary rival, Mr. Disraeli, did a few years 
later try to take the House by storm, and made a 



48 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

dismal failure of the attempt, and was thrown back 
consequently for many sessions in his Parlia- 
mentary career. One especial gift Mr. Gladstone 
very soon showed the House — his wonderful skill 
in the arrangement of figures. He came of a great 
commercial family, and he might be said to have 
been cradled in finance. To paraphrase Pope's 
famous line, he lisped in numbers, for the numbers 
came. He had some early opportunities of show- 
ing his capacity for such work, and thus he soon 
recommended himself to the attention and the 
favor of Sir Robert Peel. Peel might be said in 
a certain sense to be a Gladstone without imagina- 
tion. In later years Gladstone used to be called 
a pony Peel, so much was he thought to have 
borne a resemblance to the great free-trade Min- 
ister. Now it is to the praise of Peel to liken 
him with his pupil Gladstone. So does per- 
spective alter even in the practical life of Parlia- 
ment. 



CHAPTER V 

GLADSTONE IN OFFICE 

The principal events in Gladstone's first Par- 
liamentary session were the division over the 
choice of a Speaker — a rare event in the House 
of Commons — the measure which put a limit to 
the system of slavery in the colonies and which 
provided compensation to buy out the owners of 
property in slaves, and the measures brought in 
to deal with the conditions of the Irish State 
Church and to repress agrarian disturbances in 
Ireland — Ministers having at that time no idea 
of any way of dealing with agrarian disturbances 
in Ireland other than the introduction of new 
coercion bills. I do not purpose to go into all 
these subjects. The task I have set myself is to 
tell, in the best way I can, the story of Mr. 
Gladstone's life. I am not engaged at present in 
wTiting a history of the doings in Parliament or 
out of it during Mr. Gladstone's lifetime. I shall, 
therefore, give an account of public events only 
as they serve to illuminate the story of that one 
great career. It is, however, of much signifi- 

E 49 



50 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

cance to notice that during his very first session 
of Pariiament the House had the ominous, por- 
tentous Irish question before it again and again. 
" The Irish spectre," as it was sometimes called, 
came thus across Mr. Gladstone's earliest Parlia- 
micntary path. A long time had to pass before 
it became clear to his mind that there must be 
found some other way of dealing with Irish politi- 
cal disaffection and Irish agrarian trouble than 
the simple, stolid, and useless mechanism of succes- 
sive coercion measures. But Mr. Gladstone was 
probably making the beginning of his education 
in that way even in that very first Parliamentary 
session. The kind of friendship he formed with 
O'Connell may have had, all unconsciously at the 
hour, something to do with the expansive nature 
of his feelings at a later date towards the story 
of Irish grievances. Gladstone's mind was eager 
for the truth, but from the first it required to 
have the grip of very certain facts in order to 
lead it on towards the change. Gladstone learned 
truths most effectively by figures in arithmetic. 

Early in 1833 Mr. Gladstone took a fancy for 
becoming a student of law. It was then his wish 
to go to the bar and practise there. One can 
easily imagine what a success he would have 
made if he had only followed the bent of that 
inclination. One can imagine how he would 



GLADSTONE IN OFFICE 5 1 

have cross-examined some evasive and reluctant 
witness, how he would have argued a point of 
law with the judge, and how he would have 
carried the jury along with him by the force of 
his impassioned eloquence. He did not, however, 
pursue his design, and although he was a stu- 
dent at Lincoln's Inn for more than six years, 
he never took any step towards getting called 
to the bar, and at length requested that his name 
should be removed from the books of the society, 
on the ground that he had no longer any inten- 
tion of becoming an advocate. In the meantime, 
of course, everything had changed with him, and 
he had found his real career lying straight and 
shining before him. His great love for arithme- 
tic and his consummate skill with figures natu- 
rally attracted before long the attention and the 
admiration of Sir Robert Peel. A change took 
place in the government. The Whigs went out 
of office for the time. They were, in fact, bluntly 
dismissed by the King, William IV. — the last 
time that a sovereign of England ever made use 
of his supposed royal prerogative which gives a 
right to the peremptory dismissal of a Ministry. 
The Duke of Wellington was called upon to 
form an administration, and he insisted that he 
must have the co-operation of Sir Robert Peel. Sir 
Robert Peel was then in Rome, but he was sent 



52 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

for and brought back, travelling as fast as he could 
in those days of diligence and post-chaise. Sir 
Robert Peel accepted ofhce, and made Mr. Glad- 
stone a Junior Lord of the Treasury — a position 
which, for all its grandiose name, has practically 
nothing to do with the more serious work of admin- 
istration. It was, however, the first round of the 
ladder, and Mr. Gladstone had set his foot upon it. 

Before long he was raised from the place of a 
Junior Lord of the Treasury to be the Under- 
Secretary for the Colonies. Mr. Disraeli has said 
in one of his novels that an Under-Secretary in 
the House of Commons, whose chief is in the 
House of Lords, is master of the situation. So 
it was with Gladstone. His of^cial chief was 
the Earl of Aberdeen, who, of course, sat in the 
House of Lords, and thus the whole representa- 
tion of the Colonial Department in the House 
of Commons came into the hands of the young 
member for Newark. He had to answer every 
question put to the Colonial Office. He had to 
make every exposition of its policy. He had to 
defend every one of its measures which might 
chance to be assailed. That time happened to 
be a season of some anxiety and some trouble in 
the Colonies, and Mr. Gladstone had many an 
opportunity of showing his skill, his eloquence, 
and his mastery of each subject. 



GLADSTONE IN OFFICE 53 

His career as Under-Secretary for the Colonies 
lasted but a short time. Lord John Russell 
carried a resolution in the House of Commons in 
favor of an inquiry into the property and the 
finances of the Irish State Church — we shall hear 
of that State Church again and again in the course 
of this narrative — and Sir Robert Peel immedi- 
ately resigned his ofhce. Gladstone, of course, 
went with him. It is well to observe that Mr. 
Gladstone's occupation of office under Lord Aber- 
deen led to a friendship between the two which 
had much influence on the lives of both men. 
In more than one great crisis at a later day Lord 
Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone worked side by side. 

Mr. Gladstone then had an interval of rest 
from the worry and trouble of ofhce. He spent 
his time pleasantly, and according to his own 
ideas of how a young man's life ought to be 
spent. He took chambers in the Albany, Pic- 
cadilly, a great resort of bachelors of good posi- 
tion, and there, as Mr. George Russell tells us, 
" he pursued the same even course of steady 
work, reasonable recreation, and systematic de- 
votion which he had marked out for himself at 
Oxford." " He went freely into society," Mr. 
Russell says, " dined out constantly, and took 
his part in musical parties, delighting his hearers 
with the cultivated beauty of his tenor voice." 



54 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Then Mr. Russell goes on to mention the fact 
that Mr. Monckton Milnes, the late Lord Hough- 
ton, a poet and a host, who in his later years 
was well known to Americans in London, had 
established himself at that time in the metrop- 
olis, and used to gather around him " a society 
of young men who were interested in theology 
and politics." " He used to entertain them at 
parties on Sunday evenings," and " this arrange- 
ment," Monckton Milnes says, writing on March 
13, 1838, "unfortunately excludes the more seri- 
ous members, Acland, Gladstone, and others. I 
really think, when people keep Friday as a fast, 
they might make a feast of Sunday." Acquaint- 
ances of Lord Houghton in his later years were 
apt to say, half in jest and half in earnest, that 
there was a distinct dash of the pagan about him. 
However that may be, he was an admirable host ; 
he made it his business to know everybody who 
was really worth knowing; he held out an en- 
couraging hand to every young and promising 
author or artist, and he was probably the very 
last leading man in London society who kept up 
the old practice of inviting friends to a break- 
fast party. I may say that the " Acland " referred 
to in Lord Houghton's letter still " lives, a pros- 
perous gentleman." He is Sir Thomas Acland, 
whose son, Mr. Arthur Acland, was lately Min- 



GLADSTONE IN OFFICE 



55 



ister of Education in Mr. Gladstone's Government. 
Mr. Gladstone and Sir Thomas Acland continued 
during all their lives to be as good friends as 
they were in the old days of the receptions 
in the Albany. Mr. Russell also mentions the 
interesting fact 
that Mr. Glad- 
stone on one 
occasion enter- 
tained Words- 
worth at break- 
f as t "in a 
charmed circle 
of young ador- 
ers." 

Nearly sixty 
years after 
those happy 
leisure days in 
Mr. Gladstone's 
life, and dur- 
ing those other 
happy leisure days which came when he had 
spontaneously closed his political career, a me- 
morial drinking fountain to the memory of 
Wordsworth was unveiled in the public park of 
Cockermouth, in Cumberland, where the poet was 
born. On that occasion Mr. Gladstone wTote a 




Sir Thomas Acland 
(From a photograph by Maull & Fox, London) 



56 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

letter in which he said : " I rejoice in any and 
every manifestation of honor to Wordsworth. I 
visited his house when a boy, and when a young 
man had the honor of entertaining him more 
than once in the Albany. I revered his genius, 
and delighted in his kindness and in the grave 
and stately but not austere dignity of his manner. 
Apart from all personal impression and from all 
the prerogative of genius, as such, we owe him a 
debt of gratitude for having done so much for our 
literature in the capital points of purity and eleva- 
tion." It will be seen from this letter that Mr. 
Gladstone kept up to the end his exalted views 
as to the purpose and province of literature. He 
recognized to the full the power of even misused 
genius, but he recognized it as one must recog- 
nize the strength and the beauty of a volcanic 
eruption or a destroying avalanche. His whole 
soul went out in admiration of the genius which 
is used for what he calls " the capital points of 
purity and elevation." Disciples of the principle 
which calls itself " art for art's sake " many a 
time disparaged Mr. Gladstone's literary and artis- 
tic criticisms on the ground that he studied the 
purpose rather than the form. Yet it would be 
impossible for any of them to make out that Mr. 
Gladstone's favorites in literature, in painting, in 
sculpture, and in architecture were not illustra- 



GLADSTONE IN OFFICE t^J 

tions of genius in its highest form. There could 
have been nothing very sympathetic for Mr. 
Gladstone in the writings of Swift; yet I have 
heard him maintain more than once with earnest- 
ness and warmth that Swift was the greatest 
writer of English prose. 

All the time, however, Mr. Gladstone was a 
hard worker. He busied himself constantly with 
that part of the duties of a private member which 
is least known or thought of by the public out of 
doors. Nothing could be a greater mistake than 
to suppose that the work of a member of the 
House of Commons is confined to the hours dur- 
ing which the House is sitting. The House of 
Commons undertakes throuQ-h its committees 
much, and far too much, of the purely local busi- 
ness of every city, town, and hamlet in the United 
Kingdom. Local gas bills, water bills, railway bills, 
and all manner of miscellaneous subjects of the 
kind are referred to what are called the Private 
Bill Committees in the House of Commons. At- 
tendance on one of those committees is compulsory 
when a member has been appointed to it. The 
committees meet at eleven o'clock, usually, and go 
on until four o'clock, when the business of the 
House itself begins. Until very recent years it 
was quite common for the House to sit until three 
or four or five in the morning, and the Private 



58 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



Bill Committees met at eleven o'clock all the 
same. A member appointed to one of those com- 
mittees must be present at each of its sittings, 




The House of Commons as it appeared in the Old Parliament 
Building, burned 1834 

(This cut appeared in Sir Walter Besant's " London." Published by F. A. Stokes) 

and all the time it sits. If he failed in his 
attendance even for part of a day, the fact had to 
be reported to the Speaker of the House of Com- 
mons, and the poor delinquent was summoned to 



GLADSTONE IN OFFICE 



59 



appear in the House and explain and apologize 
for his absence, or receive the rebuke of Parlia- 
ment. Into this seemingly dreary drudgery Mr. 
Gladstone voluntarily plunged himself. The study 
of that part of the life of the House of Commons 
was interesting to him, as indeed every other study 
was. 

In the meantime he did not neglect his books 
and his regular attendance at church. " Then, as 
now," says Mr. Russell, " his constant companions 
were Homer and Dante, and it is recorded that 
at this time he read the whole of St. Augustine 
in twenty-two octavo volumes." I have heard it 
said that Mr. Gladstone was not much attracted 
towards German literature, and I do not suppose 
he ever felt drawn towards Goethe as he did 
towards Homer and Lucretius and Dante. But 
at the same time I must say that some of the 
happiest quotations I ever heard Mr, Gladstone use 
were taken from German literature — from Goethe 
and from Schiller. I have heard it said, too, that 
with all his passion for Greek literature, he never 
cared much about Aristophanes. That may be so, 
but I have to add that in my own hearing he once 
delighted and amused the House of Commons 
by an admirably appropriate citation from one of 
the comedies of Aristophanes. Quotation is be- 
coming less and less common in Parliament of 



60 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

late years, and it is indeed regarded now as a 
somewhat pedantic performance. I have heard it 
said that Mr. Gladstone was the only man who 
could compel the House to listen to a quotation 
from Lucretius. Whether the House has gained 
or has lost by its growing impatience of even the 
most appropriate literary quotation I shall not 
venture to decide, although I may have my own 
opinion. The speeches in the House are not 
any the less lengthy because they are no longer 
brightened by some words here and there taken 
from the wit and wisdom of the world's great 
classic authors. 

But now an event occurred of much importance 
to England and the whole of the Empire. The 
old King, William IV., died, and Queen Victoria 
succeeded to the throne. William IV. was not 
in any sense a great sovereign, but on the whole 
he turned out better than might have been ex- 
pected from the acts and the ways of his earlier 
career. He had been brought up as a naval 
officer, and a less manageable naval officer never 
was in the English service. He had shown him- 
self over and over again so incapable and impa- 
tient of discipline that at last it became necessary 
to withdraw him from active service altogether. 
His manners were rough and overbearing. He 
sat in the House of Lords as Duke of Clarence, 



GLADSTONE IN OFFICE 6 1 

and he made himself highly unpopular by his 
opposition to the abolition of the slave trade, 
and, indeed, to most of the measures which were 
demanded by the growing enlightenment of the 
country. There were many scandals in his life, 
and no doubt worse things were said of him than 
he deserved. But he positively obtruded himself 
on the condemnation of the public, for he openly 
wrangled with some of his brothers in the House 
of Lords, and words were interchanged among 
the royal princes which would not be tolerated by 
any Speaker of the House of Commons in our 
time. Undoubtedly, however, when he came to 
the throne he turned out much better than his 
antecedents led the country to expect. He was 
already an old man when he succeeded his brother 
George IV., and he had not many years to reign. 
Responsibility certainly improved him, and his 
people became more and more reconciled to him 
as his life grew nearer to its close. But he never 
could understand the true principle of constitu- 
tional government, although he went nearer to 
the acceptance of it than his brother and his 
father had done. We have just seen how almost 
at the close of his life he still held to his sup- 
posed right to dismiss his Ministers at his own 
good pleasure. With his death the existence of 
personal government came to an end. Queen 



62 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Victoria is really the first constitutional sovereign 
who ever sat upon the throne of England. 
Through all her long reign she has never done 
or tried to do any act which could possibly be 
called unconstitutional. She has been guided 
throughout by the advice of her Ministers, and 
she has accepted her Ministers on the recommen- 
dation of the representative House of Parliament. 
The difference in this respect between the reign 
of Queen Victoria and the reign of any of the 
Georges or even of William IV. is so great that 
one has to think the matter over in order to feel 
assured that within that short time we have trav- 
ersed so great a distance. 

The public paid a decent homage of regret 
over the tomb of William IV., and then before 
long had forgotten all about him. The accession 
of the young Queen had, to begin with, the 
great advantage that it severed the crown of 
Great Britain and Ireland from that of Hanover. 
Through the history of what is called the Hano- 
verian line down to the reign of Queen Victoria, 
the Kino- of Ena^land had been KinQ^ of Hanover 
as well, and the connection had been almost ab- 
solutely hateful to the people of England. The 
crown of Hanover descended in the male line 
only, and therefore the coming of a woman as 
sovereign of England broke off the connection. 



GLADSTONE IN OFFICE 63 

England has often since the accession of Queen 
Victoria had good reason to be glad that Hanover 
was no longer a part of her responsibility. 

With the accession of a new sovereign, a new 
Parliament had to be convoked, according to 
the custom of that day, which has since been 
altered. Gladstone was now distinctly recog- 
nized as a rising man. He was put up as a 
candidate for Manchester without his own con- 
sent. He was not elected. But he had been put 
up also, and with his consent, as a candidate 
for his former constituency, Newark, and was 
again returned. His friends in Parliament were 
in what is called the cold shade of opposition. 
Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister when the 
Queen came to the throne. But most people 
saw clearly enough that the Whig Ministry could 
not last long. Melbourne was an indolent man, 
not by any means wanting in intellect, and capa- 
ble even of statesmanship, if he could only have 
summoned up faith enough to believe in anything 
and energy enough to act on his belief. The fore- 
most statesman of the day was, beyond question, Sir 
Robert Peel, and it was not likely that such a man 
could long remain what Edmond About once ex- 
pressly described as " an unemployed Caesar." It 
was only a question of time, people said, and what 
people said in that instance turned out to be true. 



64 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

But in the meantime Mr. Gladstone had taken 
to a new sort of work. He came out as an 
author — as the author of a book on the connec- 
tion between the Church and the State. 



CHAPTER VI 

Gladstone's first book 

The full title of the book was " The State in 
its Relations with the Church." It was the 
first book Mr. Gladstone ever published. It 
created a great sensation at the time, all the 
greater because Macaulay attacked it in one of 
his most famous essays. Except as an illustra- 
tion of Mr. Gladstone's intellectual development 
and his way of thinking on religious questions, 
a way which has never since materially altered, 
the book has little interest for the world just now. 
It effected nothing in the progress of human 
thought ; it neither advanced nor retarded any- 
thing; but it gives us in the clearest style an 
understanding of Mr. Gladstone's peculiar views. 
Mr. Gladstone's mind has been from first to last 
suffused with religious faith, and also with faith 
in the practical working of religion. At the time 
when he wrote the book the position of the Eng- 
lish Church was strongly assailed both from the 
side of Roman Catholicism and from the side of 
rationalism. No better illustration of this double- 

F 65 



66 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

bladed kind of assault can be found than in the 
history of the two Newmans. " Where is the 
truth ? " exclaims Arthur Pendennis in Thack- 
eray's novel, discussing some question with George 
Warrington. " Show it me ! I see it on both 
sides. I see it in this man who worships by Act 
of Parliament and is rewarded with a silk apron 
and five thousand a year; in that man who, driven 
fatally by the remorseless logic of his creed, gives 
up everything, friends, fame, dearest ties, closest 
vanities, the respect of an army of churchmen, 
the recognized position of a leader, and passes 
over, truth-impelled, to the enemy in whose ranks 
he is ready to serve henceforth as a nameless 
private soldier; I see the truth in that man as 
I do in his brother whose logic drives him to 
quite a different conclusion, and who, after hav- 
ing passed a life in vain endeavors to reconcile 
an irreconcilable book, flings it down at last in 
despair, and declares with tearful eyes and hands 
up to heaven his revolt and recantation." 

At the time when " Pendennis " w^as written, 
many readers, especially American readers, might 
have fancied that Thackeray was dealing with 
imaginary figures, types of the two different forms 
of revolt against the English Church. Now, of 
course, we all know that he was dealing with the 
then real and living figures of John Henry New- 




Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay 

(From a photograph by Maull & Fox, London) 



GLADSTONE'S FIRST BOOK 67 

man and his brother Francis W. Newman. These 
two figures served to illustrate admirably the kind 
of revolt which from two different quarters set in 
against the State Church of England about that 
time. Mr. Gladstone was thoroughly loyal to 
the Church of England, and was a believer still 
in the possibility of her taking a governing part 
in English human affairs. Perhaps it is not too 
much to say for him that, according to his nat- 
ure and temperament, he would have preferred 
any Church to no Church at all, any religious 
sway to a sway without religion. His book, there- 
fore, was a bold effort to prove that every State 
must have a conscience, and with the conscience 
must profess a State religion. He contended 
that the Church of England was still in a con- 
dition to expound the religion of the State and 
to make itself the guiding power of the nation. 

Macaulay, in his exuberant rhetorical and yet 
practical sort of way, made mince-meat of the 
whole theory. He took the view of the political 
essayist and of the House of Commons. He pat- 
ronized Mr. Gladstone's general ideas. He compli- 
mented the young man on his rising abilities, spoke 
hopefully of his career, and paid him some compli- 
ments on his style. But, all the same, he pro- 
claimed the practical politician's view of the whole 
theory, and he defied any one to explain how the 



68 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

State was to undertake to have a conscience, a con- 
science of a purely transcendental kind, wholly 
apart from the changing condition of things and 
the new arrangements demanded by new difficul- 
ties. Time has in its rough and ready way settled 
the whole controversy long since. Few men in any 
civilized country are now of the opinion that the 
State can endow itself with a conscience which can 
decide in advance how it is to act at any wholly 
unexpected crisis. Still, there are not many of us 
who have not a certain sentimental affection for 
the exalted theory which Mr. Gladstone formed in 
those early days concerning the duties and capaci- 
ties of a State. 

Of course the whole principle of the theory con- 
sisted in the idea of a paternal government. 
Macaulay detested a paternal government, and was 
never tired of saying harsh and contemptuous 
things about it. It is really the old immemorial 
controversy between those who believe that know- 
ledge comes by intuition and those who believe that 
knowledge comes by experience. Mr. Gladstone 
insisted that the Church Establishment must be 
maintained in England "because the government 
stands with us in a paternal relation to the people, 
and is bound in all things to consider, not merely 
their existing tastes, but the capabilities and ways 
of their improvement ; because it has both an in- 



GLADSTONE'S FIRST BOOK 69 

trinsic competency and external means to amend 
and assist their choice ; because to be in accordance 
with God's mind and will it must have a relisfion, 
and because to be in accordance with its conscience 
that religion must be the truth as held by it under 
the most solemn and accumulated responsibilities ; 
because this is the only sanctifying and preserving 
principle of society, as well as to the individual that 
particular benefit without which all others are 
worse than valueless ; we must disregard the din of 
political contention and the pressure of worldly and 
momentary motives, and, in behalf of our regard to 
man as well as of our allegiance to God, maintain 
among ourselves, where happily it still exists, the 
union between the Church and the State." Mr. 
Gladstone pushed his opinions at that time so far 
that he was not even intimidated by the difificulties 
which surrounded the existence of a Protestant 
State Church in Ireland. But he was perfectly can- 
did in his admission of all the difficulties, and I 
cannot forbear from quoting a passage which 
showed how the mind of the dreamer was never 
allowed wholly to confuse the mind of the practical 
statesman. " The Protestant Legislature of the 
British Empire," says Mr. Gladstone, " maintains in 
the possession of the Church property of Ireland 
the ministers of a creed professed, according to the 
Parliamentary enumeration of 1835, by one-ninth 



70 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

of its population, regarded with partial favor by 
scarcely another ninth, and disowned by the re- 
maining seven. And not only does this anomaly 
meet us full in view, but we have also to consider 
and digest the fact that the maintenance of this 
Church for near three centuries in Ireland has been 
contemporaneous with a system of partial and abu- 
sive government, varying in degree of culpability, 
but rarely, until of later years, when we have been 
forced to look at the subject and to feel it, to be 
exempted in common fairness from the reproach of 
gross inattention (to say the very least) to the inter- 
ests of a noble but neglected people. But however 
formidable at first sight these admissions, which I 
have no desire to narrow or to qualify, may appear, 
they in no way shake the foregoing arguments. 
They do not change the nature of truth, and her 
capability and destiny to benefit mankind. They 
do not relieve government of its responsibility, if 
they show that that responsibility was once unfelt 
and unsatisfied. They place the legislature of this 
country in the condition, as it were, of one called to 
do penance for past offences; but duty remains 
unaltered and imperative, and abates nothing of her 
demand on our services. It is undoubtedly com- 
petent, in a constitutional view, to the government 
of this country to continue the present disposition 
of Church property in Ireland. It appears not too 



GLADSTONE'S FIRST BOOK /I 

much to assume that our Imperial legislature has 
been qualified to take, and has taken in point of 
fact, a sounder view of religious truth than the 
majority of the people of Ireland in their destitute 
and uninstructed state. We believe accordingly 
that that which we place before them is, whether 
they know it or not, calculated to be beneficial to 
them, and that if they know it not now they will 
know it when it is presented to them fairly. Shall 
we then purchase their applause at the expense of 
their substantial, nay, their spiritual interests ? " 

There is something positively touching in the 
ingenuousness, the sincere simplicity, of this way 
of putting the question. The State knows better 
than the people what the people ought to believe 
in religious matters, and therefore the State is 
warranted in spending the money of the people 
in teaching the people what the State thinks 
they ought to believe. The State in a constitu- 
tional country means the sovereign, the adminis- 
tration, and, above all, the majority for the time 
in the Representative Assembly. Now^ in the 
case of the British Empire the sovereign at the 
time about which we are writing, or' at all events, 
just before it, was William the Fourth. The 
Prime Minister might have been the Duke of 
Wellington, let us say, or Lord Melbourne. The 
majority of the House of Commons were elected 



72 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

to support one political party or the other. This, 
then, was the State which, according to Mr. 
Gladstone's ideas at that time, was qualified to 
teach the people what they ought to believe in 
matters of religion. It seems now only necessary 
to set forth the theory in order to dispose of it. 
But the interest of the theory is to us in the 
fact that it was then maintained, sincerely and 
eloquently maintained, by Mr. Gladstone. 

I have said that Mr. Gladstone's way of think- 
ing on religious questions has never altered mate- 
rially since the publication of the book on " The 
State in its Relations with the Church." I do not 
know that this statement of mine needs any ex- 
planation, but perhaps I had better say that, 
according to my thinking, Mr. Gladstone has 
never modified the conviction which told him 
that religion in some form must be the one solid 
basis of every State. We all know how Mr. 
Gladstone afterwards came to modify his views 
as regards the State Church in Ireland. When 
we come to deal with that subject, it will be easy 
to vindicate Mr. Gladstone's general consistency. 
In the meantime it will be enough to say that 
Mr. Gladstone condemned the Irish State Church, 
not because it was carrying out his views of its 
purpose and its duty, but because it had utterly 
failed to fulfil the only purpose which could 



GLADSTONE'S FIRST BOOK 73 

possibly warrant its existence as a Church estab- 
lishment sustained by the money of the State. 
No one supposes that Mr. Gladstone would at 
any time have desired to set up a State Church 
in Bengal because he considered that the English 
State was more likely to know all about the 
truths of religion than the natives of that Indian 
province. 

Another passage from Mr. Gladstone's book 
concerning the Irish Church may also be quoted. 
" It does indeed," Mr. Gladstone goes on to afhrm, 
" so happen that there are also powerful motives 
on the other side concurring with that which has 
here been represented as paramount. In the first 
instance, we are not called upon to establish a 
creed, but only to maintain an existing legal set- 
tlement where our constitutional right is un- 
doubted. In the second, political consideration 
tends strongly to recommend that maintenance. 
A common form of faith binds the Irish Protes- 
tants to ourselves, while they, on the other hand, 
are fast linked to Ireland, and thus they supply 
the most natural bond of connection between the 
countries. But if England, by overthrowing their 
Church, should weaken their moral position, they 
would be no longer able, perhaps no longer will- 
ing, to counteract the desires of the majority tend- 
ing under the direction of their leaders (however, 



74 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

by a wise policy, revocable from that fatal course) 
to what is termed national independence. Pride 
and fear on the one hand are therefore bearing 
up against more immediate apprehension and 
difficulty on the other. And with some men these 
may be the fundamental considerations, but it may 
be doubted whether such men will not flinch in 
some stage of the contest should its aspect at any 
moment become unfavorable." 

Exactly. There is just where, to use a colloquial 
phrase, the trouble comes in. The lofty head of 
speculation, to quote some famous words, has to 
bow to grovelling experience. Statesmen of the 
wisest class will not, as a rule, batter their heads 
against stone walls. If a subject people will not 
stand the imposition of a State Church which does 
not belong to their faith or their traditions or their 
history, it soon comes to be a question whether the 
doctrine is to be thorough, whether it is to be en- 
forced at all risks, or whether it is to be quietly 
modified. All experience tells us that, sooner or 
later, the doctrine has to be modified or that civil 
war and separation must result. Macaulay once 
again showed himself the practical statesman, the 
thorough man of the world, when he laid down the 
law that the essence of politics is compromise. Mr. 
Gladstone was still too young in feeling, and still 
too completely overborne by that religious enthu- 



GLADSTONE'S FIRST BOOK 



75 



siasm which has ahvays been an exalted part of his 
nature, to accept the idea of compromise where 
what he beheved great and fundamental truths were 
concerned. Gradually he came to recognize the 
fact that a statesman must work with his materials, 
to perceive the truth of that profound saying of 
Burke's which is apt to be misunderstood at a first 
reading, yet has only to be read again and again in 
order to impress its thorough wisdom on the mind, 
that the human system which is founded on the 
heroic virtues is doomed to failure and even to cor- 
ruption. No race of men can always or long be in 
the mood of heroic virtue, and human systems that 
are to last must admit some compromise with 
man's weaknesses and occasional wrono-headedness 
and passion, and also with men's diversity of faith 
where religious questions are concerned. All the 
same, Mr. Gladstone's exalted views in his book on 
the relations of the Church with the State seem to 
me to shine out with a peculiar attractiveness at a 
time and among a set of men with whom there was 
so little profundity, or even seriousness, as regards 
religious questions. Of course I do not agree with 
his views — I suppose nobody now accepts them. 
To a man like Lord Melbourne or a man like Lord 
Palmerston they would, no doubt, have appeared 
exquisitely ridiculous. But to me it counts a good 
deal in their favor that they could not possibly have 



']6 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

appealed to the feelings of men like Lord Mel- 
bourne and Lord Palmerston. Even Sir Robert 
Peel, a man who had an earnestness of character 
and a strength of belief far beyond anything pos- 
sessed by Melbourne or Palmerston, is said, on 
good authority, to have expressed his wonder that 
a man like Gladstone, with such a career before 
him, should have taken the trouble to write books. 
This, however, came of a general objection to a 
rising statesman throwing away his energy on the 
writing of books, and not from any philosophical or 
theological objection to the opinions of Mr. Glad- 
stone. 

The book and its whole history are interesting if 
only as an illustration of Mr. Gladstone's insatiable 
ardor for intellectual work of various kinds. He 
was always looking out for new and different fields 
of labor. Goethe was not content to be a poet and 
a novelist, but he must also be a naturalist and a 
pioneer of the theory of evolution. Gladstone was 
not content with being an orator and a statesman, 
he must also be a theologian, a reverent critic of 
Homer and Dante, and a translator of Horace. 



CHAPTER VII 

Gladstone's marriage 

In 1839 an event occurred of far greater and 
more abiding personal interest to Mr. Gladstone 
than the success or failure of any literary work 
could possibly have been. Gladstone was then, as 
he has always been since, a hard and constant 
reader. He had at this time seriously injured his 
sight by persisting in studying too much by candle- 
light. 

His physicians recommended him a complete 
rest somewhere in the south of Europe, and he 
decided upon spending the winter in Rome. In 
Rome he came into companionship with his old 
friend Henry Edward Manning, afterwards Cardi- 
nal Archbishop of Westminster, and in Manning's 
company he visited Monsignor Wiseman, after- 
wards Cardinal Wiseman, whose appointment to 
the Archbishopric of Westminster caused such a 
commotion in England. Among the visitors in 
Rome that winter were Lady Glynne, widow of Sir 
Stephen Richard Glynne, of Hawarden Castle, 
Flintshire, Wales, and Lady Glynne's daughters. 

77 



78 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



Mr. Gladstone had already some knowledge of 
these ladies, for he had known Lady Glynne's 
eldest son at Oxford, and had visited him at Ha- 
warden a few years before the winter in Rome. 
r "] The result of 

i the visit to 
t\ . Rome was that 

Gladstone be- 
came attached 
and engaged to 
Lady Glynne's 
elder daughter, 
Miss Catherine 
Glynne. On 
the 25th of July, 
1839, he was 
married at Ha- 
warden to Miss 
Glynne, and at 
the same time 
and place the 
younger daughter. Miss Mary Glynne, was married 
to George William, the fourth Lord Lyttelton. 
Miss Catherine Glynne, now Mrs. Gladstone, was 
sister of Sir Stephen Glynne, and in the event of 
Sir Stephen's death without offspring the Hawar- 
den Castle and its property were to pass to her on 
behalf of her issue. Sir Stephen Glynne was the 




LURL> LYiTliLION 
(From a photograph by Maull & Fox, London) 



GLADSTONE'S MARRIAGE 79 

last baronet of his name, and on his death, much 
later on, Hawarden passed into the hands of Mr. 
and Mrs. Gladstone. Much of Gladstone's later life 
is associated in public memory with Hawarden 
Castle. We think of him, of course, first of all, in 
the House of Commons ; then, perhaps, in the offi- 
cial residence, Downing Street, London, or Carl- 
ton House Terrace ; and more lately in Hawarden 
Castle. 

Without in the least degree invading the sacred 
domain of a great man's private life, it may be said 
that no marriage could possibly have been more 
happy than that of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone. The 
pair were young together, became mature together, 
and grew old together. I do not merely mean to 
say that they passed their lives in the same dwell- 
ing, but what I do mean to say is that they were 
always thoroughly together in purpose and in spirit, 
in heart and in soul. There never could have been 
a wife more absolutely devoted to her husband and 
to his cause than Mrs. Gladstone. There was 
something unspeakably touching, even to mere and 
casual observers like myself, in the tender care 
which she always lavished upon him, a care which 
advancing years seemed rather to increase than to 
diminish. One was reminded sometimes of the 
saying of Burke, that he never had an outside 
trouble in his life which did not vanish at the sight 



8o 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



of his wife when he crossed the threshold of his 
home. Gladstone had several children. Two of 
his sons were at one time members of the House 
of Commons. William Henry, the eldest son, has 
long since passed out of life. Herbert Gladstone 




Henry N. Gladstone and Herbert J. Gladstone as boys 

(Photographed from water color originals painted by Mary Severn) 

is, I hope and fully believe, destined to carry on 
the renown of the name. A young man, whatever 
his ability, is naturally overshadowed by the fame 
of such a father as William Ewart Gladstone. 
Herbert Gladstone has kept as far as he could in 
the background, but he has undoubted capacity, a 



GLADSTONE'S MARRIAGE 8 1 

cool judgment, a clear head, and a ready power in 
debate, while he has a voice that for penetrating 
capacity and melodious tone brings back sometimes 
a delightful recollection of his father. 

Mr. Gladstone himself made quite lately a touch- 
ing allusion to his connection with Hawarden 
Castle. It came about in this way. In March, 
1896, he was present at the opening of a new line 
of railway between Liverpool and North Wales, the 
first sod of which he had cut in the October of 
1893. I^ ^^'^^ course of a short speech which he 
delivered he recalled the memories of his boyhood 
in Liverpool, and spoke of his more recent connec- 
tion with North Wales. " I remember," he said, 
" when as a little boy I used to stroll upon the 
sands of the Mersey, now occupied for the most 
part by Liverpool docks. I remember how we 
used to look across the Mersey upon the Hundred 
of Wirral, and upon the Welsh hills beyond, just as 
an Englishman standing upon the cliffs of Dover 
now looks across into France. In point of fact, 
that is a feeble illustration, because France is now 
far more familiar to an Englishman standing on 
the cliffs of Dover than either Cheshire or North 
Wales was to the inhabitant of Lancashire at the 
period of which I speak. That has all been 
changed by a long, a hard, and a manful struggle, 
and a hard, stand-up fight between the great com- 



82 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

panics on the one side and the promoters of this, 
to all appearance, comparatively limited enterprise 
on the other. The good sense and the right and 
the true interests of the people have been with 
you. You have struggled and you have won. I 
rejoice in it. You were good enough to connect 
my name and the name of my wife with this enter- 
prise, but we have no other merit than that of 
simply having borne such testimony as we could 
to the true and the right. It is quite true that 
this enterprise has for me a particular interest. In 
Liverpool, which may be considered one of its ter- 
mini, I first drew the breath of life and saw the 
light of heaven. With Hawarden, if it please God, 
my last acquaintance with the light and with the 
air is likely to be connected. These two places 
are of great interest to me. I take them now 
simply as symbols of the connection which it was 
desirable to establish." 

In 1 84 1 the Liberal administration was getting 
into trouble. The revenue was falling and the 
budget showed a very serious deficit, something 
like two millions sterling. Sir Robert Peel, with 
his usual astuteness, saw that the time had come 
for turning the Liberals out of office. Lord John 
Russell, as representing the Government in the 
House of Commons, brought forward various pro- 
posals for an alteration in the adjustment of taxes 



GLADSTONE'S MARRIAGE 83 

SO as to restore the equilibrium of finance. Sir 
Robert Peel opposed these measures successfully, 
and at last brought forward a direct motion de- 
claring want of confidence in the Government, 
and rested this declaration on the whole financial 
policy of the Liberals. The vote was carried by 
a majority, but only a majority of one. The one 
was enough. Nothing was left to the Govern- 
ment but to dissolve Parliament and to appeal 
to the country at a general election. The result 
of the election was disastrous to the Liberals. 
The Tories came back with a large majority. 
According to the custom of those days, the Lib- 
erals still retained ofhce after the declaration of 
the polls, and presented themselves to the House 
of Commons as an administration. The usage 
then and until much later was that a Govern- 
ment, although outvoted and defeated at a general 
election, should retain ofifice until formally ex- 
pelled by a vote of the House of Commons. The 
formal expulsion soon came. The debate on the 
Address, prolonged over three nights and finish- 
ing at three o'clock on the morning of the 28th 
of August, 1 84 1, left the Liberal Government in 
a minority of 91. Sir Robert Peel was imme- 
diately sent for by the Queen, and undertook to 
form a Ministry. Mr. Gladstone had been once 
more returned for Newark, and was, of course, 



84 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

invited by Sir Robert Peel to join the new 
administration. 

It has often been stated, I do not know with what 
truth, that Mr. Gladstone was very anxious to be- 
come Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of 
Ireland — in other and less technical terms, Irish 
Secretary. Many great English statesmen. Sir 
Robert Peel himself among the rest, began their 
public career, or at least the more responsible part 
of it, in the ofhce of Irish Secretary. Sir Robert 
Peel, however, appears to have thoroughly under- 
stood that the first tendency of Gladstone's genius 
was towards finance. He, therefore, appointed him 
Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Master 
of the Mint. 

Mr. George Russell cites an interesting descrip- 
tion given by the late Baron Bunsen of a dinner 
about this time, at which Mr. Gladstone was present, 
on the occasion of the then King of Prussia's birth- 
day. " Never," says Baron Bunsen, "was heard a 
more exquisite speech ; it flowed like a gentle and 
translucent stream. . . . We drove back to town 
in the clearest starlight, Gladstone continuing with 
unabated animation to pour forth his harmonious 
thoughts in melodious tones." At that time Mr. 
Gladstone was greatly interested in the scheme for 
the setting up of an Anglican Bishopric at Jeru- 
salem. Baron Bunsen was one of the most re- 



GLADSTONE'S MARRIAGE 85 

markable men of his time. Of poor parentage 
and obscure birth, he made himself famous as a 
linguist and a scientific scholar. The " Edin- 
buro-h Review " said of him that he " was endowed 
by nature with the warmest and broadest sym- 
pathies. His knowledge was vast and varied. 
To no field of intellectual research was he a 
stranger." He was for some twenty years Secre- 
tary to the Prussian Embassy at Rome, and at 
the time wdien we met him in the company of 
Mr. Gladstone he had just been appointed Prus- 
sian Ambassador to England. He had a great 
love of ecclesiastical as well as of classical history, 
and between him and Mr. Gladstone there would, 
of course, have been a natural sympathy. " He 
acquired," says the " Edinburgh Review," " a posi- 
tion and an influence in English society which 
had never before been possessed by a German 
diplomatist." There is something charming in 
that description of the return to London " in the 
clearest starlight, Mr. Gladstone pouring forth his 
harmonious thoughts in melodious tones." 

His new office was exactly the position for 
which Mr. Gladstone was by nature best suited. 
There was a revised tariff in 1842 which abol- 
ished or else greatly lessened duties in the case 
of twelve hundred articles liable to be taxed. 
Mr. Gladstone took the leading part in the prepa- 



86 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

ration of this new tariff, and, of course, not only 
in its preparation but in its exposition and its 
defence. Then perhaps for the first time he dis- 
played his extraordinary powers as a financier 
and as a Parliamentary debater. He had to go 
through every minutest detail of his scheme in 
the House of Commons. He had to answer every 
objection, to clear up every misunderstanding, to 
reply again and again on the same question until 
he had fully impressed his meaning on the intel- 
ligence of the House of Commons. He showed 
the most minute acquaintance with every part 
of the country's commerce. He proved himself 
practically acquainted with even the smallest de- 
tails of its commercial business, and the whole 
House at once recognized in him a master of 
financial statesmanship. All contemporary writers 
unite in bearing testimony to the extraordinary 
impression he produced on the House of Com- 
mons. For it has to be observed that a man 
might have had all the commercial knowledge, 
and all the mastery of facts, and all the skill of 
argument, and yet not have been a fascinating 
Parliamentary orator. But this was what Mr. 
Gladstone then and forever after proved himself 
to be. Tariffs and taxation and commercial com- 
parisons are generally considered somewhat dry 
and tiresome subjects. Even those who want 



GLADSTONE'S MARRIAGE 8/ 

to know all about them will listen sometimes to 
their careful exposition only because they want 
to get the knowledge and have to listen while 
it is being expounded. But Mr. Gladstone could 
make dry bones of finance live again. He could 
brighten the dullest financial subject with what 
miofht almost be called the musical touch of 
genius. That was the quality which he then 
for the first time, displayed in full to the House 
of Commons. In this way he was like Peel. 
People, indeed, then began to speak of him as 
a " pony Peel." In after years the public began 
to recognize that the pupil had surpassed the 
master. From the time of the debates on the 
revised tariff it was quite evident that Gladstone 
was the Qrreat comins: financial minister. It was 
evident, too, that he was the great coming Par- 
liamentary orator. His admission to the Cabinet 
was only a question of opportunity. All the 
time, however, he still kept up his studies in 
ecclesiastical history, his readings in the great 
classic poets, and his interest in all questions 
that concerned education and social improvement. 
From some of his letters written at the very 
time when he was thus impressing the House 
of Commons as the rising financial statesman of 
England one might almost be led to believe 
that he was thinking nothing about finance, that 



88 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

tariffs and duties were matters of no concern to 
him, and that he was wholly absorbed in patris- 
tic literature or in the mediaeval schools of phi- 
losophy or in the art of the Renaissance or in 
the marvels of the ancient and modern potteries. 
Nothing that was interesting came amiss to him. 
He was as fond of receiving as of giving out in- 
formation. He delighted in meeting any stranger 
who could give him some new idea or some new 
suggestion. Life must have been radiantly happy 
for him at that time, when, with all the world 
to interest him, he must have had the conscious- 
ness that with him a great political career was 
just about to begin. We shall see before long 
how ready he was, on a point of conscience, to 
risk the chances of that career. 

In 1843 Mr. Gladstone obtained for the first 
time a place in the Cabinet. His reputation 
had been growing so steadily that every one took 
it for granted that his elevation to Cabinet rank 
was only a question of opportunity, and that the 
first time the vacancy occurred the position would 
be offered to him. So, indeed, the event proved. 
Lord Ripon resigned his place as President of 
the Board of Trade, and became President of the 
Board of Control — a Board established by Pitt 
to control the affairs of India — and Mr. Glad- 
stone succeeded him in the Board of Trade, and 



GLADSTONE'S MARRIAGE 89 

became a member of the Cabinet. His course 
now seemed to be clearly marked out. He had 
attained the position which every one had long 
believed him destined to occupy, and there was 
nothing for him but to go on rising and rising 
step by step. He had never pushed himself, he 
had never spoken in the House when there was 
not a genuine occasion for him to speak. He 
had kept himself in the background, so far as it 
was possible for a man of such gifts to be kept 
in the background ; his success had not been a 
sudden blaze, but rather a steady growth of light. 
Now, however, that he seemed to have found his 
place, he was suddenly compelled to abandon it. 
No outer force of compulsion was applied to him 
but the working of his own conscience dictated 
and enforced the step he was to take. In the 
earlier days of the session of 1845 Sir Robert 
Peel proposed to advance a certain way towards 
the propitiation of Irish public opinion. Sir 
Robert Peel had had this course strongly pressed 
upon him for some time by the Irish National Rep- 
resentatives and by the Roman Catholic priest- 
hood of Ireland. He resolved, therefore, to estab- 
lish certain non-sectarian colleges in Ireland, and 
also to increase the grant to the College of May- 
nooth, a college intended for the exclusive educa- 
tion of Roman Catholics and especially for the 



90 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

education of Roman Catholic priests. The Col- 
lege had had a small grant for a considerable 
time, which was given chiefly with the hope of 
encouraging Irish students for the Catholic priest- 
hood to remain at home and get their teaching 
there instead of seeking it, as so many of them 
had had to seek it, in France and Italy and Spain. 
Mr. Gladstone was no enemy to the Maynooth 
grant, or even to its increase, as he afterv^^ards 
proved. But he thought that the proposals of 
the Government put him into a position of much 
conscientious difficulty. Was he to pledge him- 
self to support the measure which he had not 
yet fully considered, or was he simply to retain 
his place in the Cabinet, as so many another man 
would have done, and let the Prime Minister 
have his way, or was he to retire from the Gov- 
ernment altogether ? Now, there is a strong 
objection felt in England to any member of a 
Government who suddenly retires from it because 
of what the ruder public opinion regards as over- 
conscientious scruples. A man who takes such 
a course is very apt to find himself left in almost 
complete isolation. " You can't count on him," 
practical statesmen say. " You don't know at 
what critical moment he may find that his con- 
science is troubling him, and that he is bound to 
abandon his post and go apart into a corner and 



GLADSTONE'S MARRIAGE 



91 



think the whole thing over in the depths of his 
moral consciousness." To be considered eccentric 
or quixotic is almost fatal to a rising adminis- 
trator in the House of Commons, where the prin- 
ciple of what is called common sense is encouraged 
in a domination which highly wrought tempera- 
ments and intellects sometimes find it impossible 
to endure. Many of Mr. Gladstone's closest friends 
strongly urged him to conquer his scruples and 
to remain in the Cabinet. One of those who 
gave him this advice was Archdeacon Manning, 
who had not then passed over to the Roman 
Catholic Church. Archdeacon Manning pointed 
out to him that his influence in the Cabinet would 
be of immense service to the Church of Enoiand, 
and that his withdrawal from office could not fail 
to do damage to its interests. The same sort of 
advice was given to him by other friends, each 
from his own different point of view. " If you 
leave the Government just now," said one, " on 
this particular question, you are committed to 
oppose them on this particular question when it 
comes to be discussed as a Government measure ; 
and there you are — your time and your gifts as 
a financial administrator all thrown away on a 
mere matter of religious agitation." " Think," 
said others again, " how much we all expected of 
you in the way of genuine social and educational 



92 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

reform, and now, because of some curious scruple, 
you are going to kick over the traces and get 
out of the administration altogether." 

Gladstone, however, remained quite firm. The 
opinions that other men regarded as mere fastidi- 
ous scruples were sacred principles to him. He 
remained fixed in his intention, and he explained 
his feelings very fully and candidly. He intended, 
he said, to resign his place in the administration 
— his first place in the Cabinet — but he firmly 
declared that his resignation of office was not 
necessarily to be followed by an opposition to the 
scheme of the Government of which he was no 
longer to be a member. " My whole purpose 
was," he explained in a letter, " to place myself 
in a position in which I should be free to con- 
sider my course without being liable to any just 
suspicion on the ground of personal interest. It 
is not profane if I now say, ' With a great price 
obtained I this freedom.' The political associa- 
tion in which I stood was to me, at the time, 
the alpha and omega of public life. The Gov- 
ernment of Sir Robert Peel was believed to be 
of immovable strength. My place, as President 
of the Board of Trade, was at the very kernel of 
its most interesting operations, for it was in prog- 
ress from year to year, with continually wax- 
ing courage, towards the emancipation of indus- 



GLADSTONE'S MARRIAGE 93 

try, and therein towards the accomphshment of 
another great and blessed work of public justice. 
Giving up what I highly prized, ... I felt myself 
open to the charge of being opinionated and want- 
ing in deference to really great authorities, and I 
could not but know that I should inevitably be 
regarded as fastidious and fanciful, fitter for a 
dreamer, or possibly a schoolman, than for the 
active purposes of public life in a busy and mov- 
ing: ao;e-" These words reveal the whole nature 
of the man. 

Mr. Gladstone then resigned his position as a 
Cabinet member of his great friend's administra- 
tion. But although he resigned his place, he 
nevertheless supported the increased grant to the 
College of Maynooth by voice and vote. Had he 
been a man of less original power and genius, 
such a course of action mio-ht have rendered him 
hopeless for his whole life as a leading member of 
any possible administration. Being a statesman of 
supreme genius and command, he had, of course, 
to be put later on into a position befitting his 
political and financial capacity. But what I espe- 
cially wish to direct attention to is the fact that 
Gladstone was not by any means regarded at that 
time as a statesman of such supreme political 
and financial genius. He was accepted as a very 
rising man, who was almost sure to become before 



94 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

long a Chancellor of the Exchequer. But he was 
not regarded as what Lord Palmerston once called 
" the inevitable man " ; and there was no reason 
why, if he had made a political mistake and shown 
an over-fastidious mind, he should not have passed, 
as others had done, out of the running for high 
administrative office. Men had not then in Eng- 
land imported from the political life of the United 
States the epithet " a crank." But the reality of 
the description was quite understood. They had 
in Parliament then, as we have now, many cranks ; 
and to be a crank is to be a failure. It might 
have been thought at that time, which had not the 
experience of our time, that William Ewart Glad- 
stone was going to turn out a mere crank, when 
for his scruples about the Maynooth grant he re- 
signed his place in the Cabinet and in the admin- 
istration of Sir Robert Peel. 

I am very anxious to direct the especial atten- 
tion of my readers to this, as it now seems, quite 
uninlportant episode in the career of Mr. Glad- 
stone. It is necessary to begin at the beginning, 
and this is the beginning of one chapter of illus- 
tration of Mr. Gladstone's character as a statesman. 
If we do not understand him by this revelation of 
his nature and his temperament, we shall never 
understand him at all. The whole question then 
at issue has been long since settled, and is all but 



GLADSTONE'S MARRIAGE 95 

forgotten. As I have said, Mr. Gladstone actually 
supported the Government in the measure brought 
in to increase the grant to the College of May- 
nooth. He spoke at some length in support of 
the increased grant. Then why did he resign his 
seat in the Cabinet because a measure was to be 
introduced which on its introduction he cordially 
supported ? Here we get at a study of the char- 
acter of the man. He had not made up his mind 
as to the purpose of the bill when it was submitted 
to the Cabinet. He could not pledge himself to 
support it and to speak for it. He thought it 
quite likely that it would commend itself to his 
maturer judgment — and, at all events, he told all 
his friends that he had not the least idea of pledg- 
ing himself to vote against it — but he could not 
just then see his way, and he preferred not to take 
any responsibility for the measure, of which up to 
the time of its expected introduction he had not 
been able to make up his mind altogether to 
approve. 

Just think what an absurdity this must have 
seemed to the hack ministerialist of the time ! 
Fancy what the Tapers and Tadpoles, the Wishies 
and Washies of Mr. Disraeli's novels, would have 
thought of it ! Only fancy — this young fellow, 
Gladstone, who has just got into the Cabinet, al- 
ready feeling scruples of conscience about obeying 



96 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

the dictation of his chief, and actually giving up 
his place in the Government just because his own 
absurd conscience doesn't quite see its way in that 
particular direction ! Well, at all events, there is 
one comfort — we have heard the last of this young- 
Gladstone ! Nobody will ever offer him a seat in 
a Cabinet again ! Sensible men can't do with 
fellows of that kind. He seemed a coming man — 
and now he's gone ! 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE FREE-TRADE STRUGGLE 

On the twenty-third of July, 1845, Mr. Gladstone 
wrote to a very dear and intimate friend of his a 
letter, some passages of which have a distinct his- 
torical interest. " Ireland," says Mr. Gladstone, " is 
likely to find this country and Parliament so much 
employment for years to come that I feel rather 
oppressively an obligation to try and see with my 
own eyes instead of using those of other people, 
according to the limited measure of my means. 
Now, your company would be so very valuable, as 
well as agreeable, to me, that I am desirous to 
know whether you are at all inclined to entertain 
the idea of devoting the month of September, after 
the meeting in Edinburgh, to a working tour in 
Ireland with me — eschewing all grandeur and tak- 
ing little account even of scenery, compared with 
the purpose of looking from close quarters at the 
institutions for the relio-ion and education of the 
country and at the character of the people. It 
seems ridiculous to talk of supplying the defects 
of second-hand information by so short a trip ; but 

H 97 



98 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

though a longer thue would be much better, yet 
even a very contracted one does much when it is 
added to an habitual though indirect knowledge." 
I am sorry to say that the suggested trip never 
came off. I wish it had come off. I wish Mr. 
Gladstone could then have gone to Ireland and 
seen with his own eyes the condition of the peas- 
antry and the condition of the landlords. It was 
on the very eve of the famine which forced Peel's 
hand and compelled him to allow foreign corn to 
come freely into Ireland. Mr. Gladstone, if he had 
then gone to Ireland, would have seen with his 
own eyes, even in the course of a month's tour — 
would have seen it though he had never asked a 
question by the way — that the Irish cottier tenant 
was being utterly crushed by the rack-rent system. 
The Irish cottier tenant, John Stuart Mill said, 
was about the only man in the world he knew of 
who could neither benefit by his industry nor suffer 
by his improvidence. If he was industrious and 
raised the value of his tenancy, his landlord came 
down upon him for an increased rent; and if he 
was improvident, the worst that could happen to 
him was to go into the workhouse or else to starve, 
either of which might well happen to him in any 
case. Mr. Gladstone's Irish land legislation nearly 
thirty years later on would have been in all proba- 
bility much more effective, and would have stood 



THE FREE-TRADE STRUGGLE 



99 



much less in need of expansion and emendation, if 
he had visited Ireland in 1845, and seen her con- 
dition with his own keen, observant eyes. But the 
visit did not come off, and it was not until a great 
many years after that Mr. Gladstone paid a short 
visit to Ireland. Even then he did not 2:0 with 
any intention of studying the agricultural condi- 
tions of the country. He had introduced and car- 
ried the first of his schemes of land legislation for 
Ireland, and it was characterized by a certain nar- 
rowness and even timidity which in all probability 
would not have been found in such a measure if it 
had been inspired by the personal observation of 
1845. 

In the winter of 1845 Mr. Gladstone met with 
a slight accident which left its mark forever. He 
was fond of shooting, as he was fond of nearly all 
out-of-door exercises and sports. One day his gun 
suddenly exploded at the moment when he was 
loading it, and so injured the first finger of his 
left hand that the finger had to be cut off. Since 
then he has always worn a black ribbon round the 
hand and covering the stump of the amputated 
finger. Strangers visiting the House of Commons 
for the first time, when Mr. Gladstone still occu- 
pied his leading position there, were sure to ask 
what was the matter with his left hand and what 
was the meaning of the black ribbon. 



lOO THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

This was the only serious accident, so far as I 
know, which Mr. Gladstone ever encountered. He 
was, indeed, much later on, attacked by a cow in 
Hawarden grounds, but he kept his nerves all 
right, and he managed to escape without any 
serious harm. His passion for the hewing down 
of trees came at a later date, and it probably did 
more than any other exercise could have done to 
streno'then his frame and enable him to withstand 
the wearying effects of a life so much of which 
was strictly sedentary. For it has to be impressed 
upon the mind of the reader that during all his 
life Mr. Gladstone was a man of prodigious study. 
He was always studying some author or some 
series of authors. He wrote criticisms on Homer, 
criticisms by the enraptured admirer rather than 
by the dry-as-dust scholiast. He grappled with 
whole libraries of patristic authors. He seemed 
to want to read everything and understand every- 
thing, and all the time his Parliamentary work 
was going on in full swing. Now, the regular 
work of the House of Commons is occupation 
enough for most men. If they are inclined to 
stick to it, they find that they have plenty to do, 
and the more they do the more they have yet to 
do. But Mr. Gladstone stuck to all the details of 
his life in the House of Commons, while at the 
same time he was an indefatigable student of 



THE FREE-TRADE STRUGGLE 



lOI 




View of Hawarden from the South 

(From a photograph by A. P. Monger, London) 



literature, of history, and of theology. No subject 
that could be of interest to humanity failed to have 
an absorbing interest for him. All the time, too, 
he was getting the very most he could in the way 
of outdoor exercise. No doubt this was the secret 



102 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

of his splendid and prolonged physical health — 
that he never allowed himself to become the mere 
member of Parliament, or the mere student, but 
that he always remembered that he had fibres 
and limbs to keep in healthy, vigorous action, and 
that whenever there was a chance of outdoor 
exercise he was a man to get it and to enjoy it. 

His political opponents made in later years a 
good deal of capital out of his love for the feUing 
of trees. "That is Gladstone all over," they said — 
" to cut down something which he can never cause 
to grow again ; there is his one chief idea of states- 
manship." But this, of course, was later on. Even 
still, Mr. Gladstone was generally regarded as a 
rising young Tory statesman. 

In this year, 1845, he wrote a letter to the late 
Bishop Wilberforce, in which he explained that 
his views with regard to the Irish Established 
Church were becoming less fixed and clear than 
they had been before. Mr. George Russell 
attaches, and I think justly, a great deal of impor- 
tance to that letter. I will quote some sentences 
of it. 

" I am sorry," says Mr. Gladstone, " to express 
my apprehension that the Irish Church is not in 
a large sense efficient; the working results of 
the last ten years have disappointed me. It may 
be answered, Have faith in the ordinance of 



THE FREE-TRADE STRUGGLE 103 

God; but then I must see the seal and signature, 
and these how can I separate from ecclesiastical 
descent ? The title, in short, is questioned, and 
vehemently, not only by the radicalism of the 
day, but by the Roman bishops, who claim to 
hold the succession of St. Patrick ; and this claim 
has been alive all along from the Reformation, 
so that lapse of years does nothing against it." 
I am not quoting" this letter either for its political 
or its theological interest. The Irish Church 
question has been settled long ago, and settled 
by Mr. Gladstone. No man in his senses would 
now think of looking for the State endowment of 
a Church in a country the vast majority of whose 
inhabitants conscientiously refuse to enter that 
Church's doors. But it is a common charge 
made against Mr. Gladstone by his political oppo- 
nents that his changes of opinion were sudden and 
were in the political sense opportune. I have 
the strongest conviction the other way, and I am 
taking pains to make it clear that Mr. Gladstone's 
changes of opinion were of slow and steady 
growth, long thought out, and at first resisted. 
Therefore I quote these sentences in the letter 
to Bishop Wilberforce in 1845. They prove that 
so far back as that distant time Mr. Gladstone's 
doubts as to the value and the claims of the Irish 
State Church were already becoming serious. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE FREE-TRADE STRUGGLE ; MEMBER FOR OXFORD 

I NEED not go over again here the old familiar 
story of the struggle against the Corn Laws and in 
favor of free trade. The Anti-Corn Law League 
had become a popular power in England, For 
a long time it was able to command but a very 
poor support in the House of Commons. The 
movement in the House of Commons was led 
by Mr. Charles Villiers, who, I am glad to say, 
is still living and, in Homeric phrase, looking on 
the earth. Mr. Villiers was an aristocrat by birth, 
a member of the great Clarendon family, so famous 
at many periods of English history. For years 
he led the Parliamentary movement in favor of 
the abolition of duties on the importation of 
foreign corn. Later on he obtained the splen- 
did assistance, first of Mr. Cobden, and then of 
Mr. Bright, who both obtained seats in the 
House of Commons. Still the movement, more 
powerful in the country, made but little advance 
in Parliament, and, indeed, its prospects seemed 
darkest at the very moment when events were 
coming to insure its rapid success. 

104 



THE FREE-TRADE STRUGGLE 



105 



In England, and perhaps in other States as 
well, an object-lesson is needed in order to secure 
the passing of any great reform. The object- 
lesson in this case was given by the Irish Famine. 
" Famine itself," said Bright, "against which we had 
warred, joined 
us." In the au- 
tumn of 1845 
the total failure 
of the Irish po- 
tato crop set in ; 
and the vast 
majority of the 

Irish working ' __J^[^^ />*>m 

population de- .s^^^S^M^ •.■••>" ./ 

pended abso- 
lutely upon the 
potato for sub- 
sistence. Under 
the conditions, it 
was all but im- 
possible to maintain the duty on the importation 
of foreign corn. There can be no doubt whatever 
that the mind of Sir Robert Peel, and the mind 
of his great rival. Lord John Russell, had been 
tending more and more for some time in the 
direction of free trade. Peel's Cabinet all but 
broke up on the question, and he had to bring 




The Rt. Hon. Charles Pelham Villiers, M.P. 

(From a photograph by EUiott & Fry) 



io6 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



in capable men to supply the places of those 
who could not work with him in his new policy. 
Mr. Gladstone had by this time become a thor- 
ough convert to the principles of free trade, and 
he was invited by Peel to accept the office of 

Colonial Secre- 
tary in the room 
of Lord Stanley, 
afterwards the 
Earl of Derby, 
who found that 
he could not go 




Sir Robert Peel 

(From an old wood cut) 



further with Peel 
on the way to 
a repeal of the 
Corn Laws. A 
curious fact in 
the story is that 
Mr. Gladstones 
accepting ofhce 
led to his exclusion from Parliament for the whole 
of the memorable session during which Peel's 
free-trade scheme was debated in the House of 
Commons. It came about in this way : Mr. Glad- 
stone's acceptance of ofhce compelled him to offer 
himself for re-election to his constituency if he 
desired to retain his seat in Parliament. But then 
Mr. Gladstone was the representative of Newark, 



THE FREE-TRADE STRUGGLE lO/ 

a borough which was practically controlled by the 
Duke of Newcastle, from whose influence and 
patronage, as I have already explained, Mr. Glad- 
stone had secured his seat. The Duke of New- 
castle was a sturdy protectionist, and could not 
be expected to give his influence in favor of a 
free-trade candidate. Mr. Gladstone felt a natural 
and an honorable scruple about opposing his old 
friend and supporter, the Duke of Newcastle, 
and he therefore made up his mind to retire 
from the representation of the borough and to 
remain out of Parliament until such time as an 
opportunity could arise for contesting some other 
seat. 

He issued his retiring address to the Newark 
electors on the 5th of January, 1846. "By 
accepting the ofhce of Secretary of State for 
the Colonies," he said, " I have ceased to be your 
representative in Parliament. On several accounts 
I should have been peculiarly desirous at the 
present time of giving you an opportunity to pro- 
nounce your constitutional judgment on my public 
conduct by soliciting at your hands a renewal of 
the trust which I have already received from you 
on five successive occasions, and held during a 
period of thirteen years. But, as I have good 
reason to believe that a candidate recommended 
to your favor through local connections may ask 



I08 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

your suffrages, it becomes my very painful duty 
to announce to you, on that ground alone, my 
retirement from a position which has afforded 
me so much honor and satisfaction." Mr, Glad- 
stone declared that he had accepted office only 
because he held that it was for those who believed 
that the Government was acting according to the 
demands of public duty to testify to that belief, 
however limited their sphere might be, by their 
co-operation. The course he had taken, he de- 
clared, was taken in obedience to the clear and 
imperious call of public obligation. Mr. Glad- 
stone, it was well known, had been the chief 
inspiration of Sir Robert Peel on this question 
of free trade. Even when he was not actually 
in office, the policy of Peel's Government had 
been mainly moulded by his energy, his know- 
ledge, and his guidance. It seemed, therefore, 
a curious stroke of fate that the whole session of 
debate on the free-trade scheme should have been 
carried on without Mr. Gladstone's presence and 
co-operation. It seems to me something like a 
positive loss to the history of the English Par- 
liament that Mr. Gladstone's wonderful eloquence 
and marvellous power of arraying facts and figures 
should not have been allowed a chance of influ- 
encing that great debate. Sir Robert Peel, of 
course, carried his scheme in despite of the re- 



THE FREE-TRADE STRUGGLE 



109 



sistance of nearly all his former Tory followers. 
But he fell from power in a moment. He had 
undertaken to introduce' a measure for the estab- 
lishment of a new coercion scheme in Ireland. 
On the very day when the Free-Trade Bill passed 
through its third reading in the House of Lords, 
Peel's Coercion Bill for Ireland was thrown out 
by a large majority in the House of Commons. 
Some of the Liberals and nearly all the Radicals 
in England had always made it a principle to 
oppose mere bills for establishing coercion in Ire- 
land, if unaccompanied by serious and solid 
schemes of legislative concession and reform. 
All these, therefore, voted against Peel on prin- 
ciple. The Irish members, who followed O'Con- 
nell's leadership, were, of course, determined to 
vote against it. All depended on the Tories, and 
the Tories were now thinking of nothing but 
revenge upon Sir Robert Peel for his abandon- 
ment of the cause of protection. Mr. Disraeli 
himself frankly owned that "vengeance had tri- 
umphed over all other sentiments " in the minds 
of the Tory party. The field was lost, but at 
any rate there should be retribution for those who 
had betrayed the cause. So the Peel party was 
turned out of office at the very moment of its 
greatest triumph. 

Mr. Gladstone did not reappear in the House of 



no 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



Commons until the autumn session of 1847. There 
had been a general election, and Mr. Gladstone 
was invited to stand for the University of Oxford. 
There could surely have been no seat that he was 
better qualified to represent, or which he could 
,_ ,, . have had greater 

pride in repre- 
senting. Oxford 
had been the 
home of his 
younger days. 
Its scenery, its 
surroundings, its 
buildings, its his- 
tory, its tradi- 
tions, were dear 
to his heart ; the 
sweetest memo- 
ries of his youth 

One of Mr. Gladstone's London Residences belon2"ed tO it * 

No. 6 Carlton Gardens. (A. P. Monger, London) - _ . 

his definite am- 
bitions were formed and cultured and guided in 
it. Gladstone was elected for the University. He 
did not come first on the list. Sir Robert Harry 
Inglis, a bigoted Tory of the old-fashioned order, 
led the way, Mr. Gladstone came next, and a man 
whose very name is now forgotten by most people 
was the defeated candidate. Still, Mr. Gladstone 




THE FREE-TRADE STRUGGLE m 

came in as a representative of Oxford, and the 
University did herself honor by the choice. Later 
on, as we shall see, it was Oxford's perverse fate to 
deprive herself of the honor. But for the time, at 
all events, Mr. Gladstone was the representative of 
the University of Oxford, and was in his rightful 
place. It was later on but a new mark of his politi- 
cal progress when he had to seek another constitu- 
ency. 

Mr. Gladstone's address to the electors of Oxford 
is even still a document of great public and still 
greater personal interest. It explains for the first 
time the chanQ-e which had been comino- over his 
convictions with regard to the relationship between 
the Church and the State. He acknowledged that 
in the earlier part of his public life he had been an 
advocate for the exclusive support of the national 
religion by the State. But he came to learn that it 
would be futile to try to maintain such a position. 
" I found," he wrote, " that scarcely a year passed 
without the adoption of some fresh measure involv- 
ing the national recognition and the national sup- 
port of various forms of religion, and in particular 
that a recent and fresh provision had been made for 
the propagation from a public chair of Arian or 
Socinian doctrines. The question remaining for 
me was whether, aware of the opposition of the 
English people, I should set down as equal to noth- 



112 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

ing, in a matter primarily connected, not with our 
own, but with their priesthood, the wishes of the 
people of Ireland, and whether I should avail my- 
self of the popular feeling in regard to the Roman 
Catholics for the purpose of enforcing against them 
a system which we had ceased by common consent 
to enforce against Arians, a system, above all, of 
which I must say that it never can be conformable 
to policy, to justice, or even to decency, when it has 
become avowedly partial and one-sided in its appli- 
cation." This address, then, shows us Mr. Glad- 
stone in his new stage of mental and spiritual 
development. The old theory about the relation- 
ship between the State and Church has had to give 
way to the teaching of experience, and to the in- 
born conviction that it is in vain to strive against 
actual facts. The true fanatic, of course, learns 
nothing from experience. He clings to his politi- 
cal dogma although he finds it wholly impossible 
to maintain it in action. To this mood of mind a 
man of Mr. Gladstone's genius and capacity for 
receiving new ideas never could descend. Mr. 
George Russell, commenting on this event in Mr. 
Gladstone's career, observes that that career " natu- 
rally divides itself into three main parts. The 
first of them ends with his retirement from the rep- 
resentation of Newark. The central part ranges 
from 1847 to 1868. Happily, the third is still in- 



THE FREE-TRADE STRUGGLE 113 

complete." Mr. Russell's book was published in 
1 89 1. We have since then seen the completion of 
Mr. Gladstone's political career. The whole story 
has been told. 

For some three years after the dissolution of 
1847, Mr. Gladstone's life was not marked by any 
distinct political events, so far as his particular 
career was concerned. They were three years of 
what Robert Burns calls " sturt and strife " all over 
the European continent, and in England and in 
Ireland, but Mr. Gladstone's political action was 
not of great public importance. He was as careful 
as ever in his attendance to his Parliamentary 
duties, and he spoke on all manner of important 
public questions. He opposed the measure mak- 
ing lawful a marriage with a deceased wife's sister, 
on grounds at once social and religious, contending 
that " such marriages are contrary to the law of 
God, declared for three thousand years and up- 
wards." In absolute contradiction to the opinions 
expressed in some of his former speeches, he advo- 
cated the admission of the Jews to Parliament; 
and, indeed, I may say that one of the most inter- 
esting and important events of the general election 
which brought Mr. Gladstone in for Oxford was the 
election of Baron Rothschild, a Jew, for the City 
of London. Mr. Gladstone supported Lord John 
Russell in a resolution passed by the House of 



114 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Commons which declared the Jews ehgible for elec- 
tion to all places and functions for which Roman 
Catholics might lawfully be chosen. He defended 
the establishment of diplomatic relations with the 




Mrs. Gladstone 

(From the portrait by E. R. Saye) 

Papal court. He called for reform in the naviga- 
tion laws, a reform which would make the ocean, 
" that great highway of nations, as free to the ships 
that traverse its bosom as to the winds that sweep 
it." Any one could see by following the records of 



THE FREE-TRADE STRUGGLE 



115 



his quiet career during those years that they were a 
time of development with him. On many subjects 
his path was perfectly clear, and his way was to 
lead onwards. But there still clung around him 
some of the traditions of that Toryism under which 
he had been brought up, and which even yet had 
for him an almost romantic fascination. 

In 1850 the first pang of sorrow was brought 
into the happy life of himself and Mrs. Gladstone. 
In the April of that year Catherine Jessie, a child 
not yet five years old, lost her life. She had suf- 
fered long from a painful illness, during which she 
was tenderly watched over, not only by her mother, 
but by her father as well. This was the first in- 
trusion of death into the household, and we may be 
sure that it was always remembered. There are 
wounds which never heal for natures like those of 
Mr. Gladstone and his wife. 



CHAPTER X 

DON PACIFICO DEATH OF SIR ROBERT PEEL 

The " Don Pacifico question " was the occasion 
of a great debate in the House of Commons. 
Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone divided the 
honors of the debate between them. It was the 
greatest speech Lord Pahnerston had ever made up 
to that time. It was probably the greatest speech 
Mr. Gladstone had made up to that time. What 
was it all about } Who was Don Pacifico ? Such 
questions might fairly be asked even by a well-read 
young man of the present day. Don Pacifico 
figured in the politics of that day very much as 
Monsieur Jecker did at the time of the French 
intervention in Mexico. Don Pacifico was the 
comet of a season. His claims went very near to 
bringing on European war, and they certainly 
caused for a time a feeling of estrangement and 
even anger between England and France. Don 
Pacifico was a Jew of Portuguese extraction, but 
he was born in Gibraltar, and was therefore a sub- 
ject of the Queen. He was living in Athens, and 
in 1847 his house was attacked and plundered by 

116 



DON PACIFICO — DEATH OF SIR ROBERT PEEL 117 

an Athenian mob. The wrath of the mob was 
inflamed because Don Pacifico was a Jew, and the 
Greek Government had made an order that the 
famihar celebration of Easter by the burning of an 
efflgy of Judas Iscariot should not be allowed to 
take place any more. The mob got angry, and 
wreaked their wrath on Don Pacifico's house. 
Don Pacifico made a claim against the Greek 
Government for compensation, estimating his losses 
at more than thirty thousand pounds sterling. He 
did not make any appeal to the Greek law-courts, 
but when his demand was refused addressed him- 
self directly to the Foreign Office in London. 

The Foreign Office had at that time various 
complaints, more or less important, against the 
Greek Government. No doubt the Greek authori- 
ties had been somewhat careless and free, but it is 
right to say that they showed themselves perfectly 
willing to come to any reasonable understanding 
with England. Still, they seem to have been quite 
staggered by the demand of more than thirty thou- 
sand pounds for the destruction of household 
property in Don Pacifico's modest little dwelling. 
An English historian says that Don Pacifico 
charged in his bill one hundred and fifty pounds 
sterling for a bedstead, thirty pounds for the sheets 
of the bed, twenty-five pounds for two coverlets, 
and ten pounds for a pillov/-case, and the writer 



Il8 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

adds that " Cleopatra might have been contented 
with bed furniture so luxurious as Don Pacifico 
represented himself to have in his common use." 
The Greek Government had no faith in the costly 
bedstead and the expensive sheets and coverlets. 
They declined to pay, and the Don, as I have 
said, did not seek his remedy in any court of law. 
Lord Palmerston happened to be in one of his 
bumptious moods, and he had got it into his head 
that the French Minister in Athens was privately 
urging the Greek Government to resist all the 
English claims. So Lord Palmerston lumped up 
the whole claims into one national demand, and 
insisted that Greece must pay up the money within 
a short, definite time. The Greek Government 
still hung back, and the British fleet was ordered 
to Piraeus, where he seized all the Greek vessels 
belonging to the Government and to private mer- 
chants which were found in the harbor. This 
high-handed course gave great offence, not alone 
to Greece — which would have been a matter of 
little importance — great powers do not generally 
care much about the feelings of small States — but 
to France and to Russia. France and Russia were 
powers joined with England in the treaty drawn up 
for the protection of the independence of Greece. 
The Russian Government wrote an angry and, 
indeed, a furious remonstrance. The French Gov- 



DON PACIFICO — DEATH OF SIR ROBERT PEEL 



119 



ernment withdrew for a time their Ambassador from 
London. All Europe was thrown into alarm, and 
indeed it was only the trumpery nature of the 
whole dispute, which rendered it impossible that 
rational nations could take up arms about it, that 
averted a calamitous war. After a while the whole 
dispute was quietly settled. Don Pacifico was 
lucky enough to get about one-thirtieth of his 
demand, and no doubt was well able to restock his 
house with very decent bed furniture. 

In the meantime, however, the attention of Par- 
liament and the public in England was directed to 
the serious nature of the course which Lord Pal- 
merston had taken. Lord Stanley in the House of 
Lords moved what was practically a vote of cen- 
sure on the Government, and he carried it by a 
majority of thirty-seven. For this, of course, Lord 
Palmerston did not care three straws. The Peers 
might amuse themselves every night of their lives, 
if they liked, by voting a censure on the existing 
Government of the country, and the Government 
would go on just as if nothing had happened. 
But it was quite a different thing with the House 
of Commons, and Lord Palmerston very well 
knew that his conduct with regard to Greece was 
strongly condemned by some of the most power- 
ful men in the Representative Chamber. He acted 
with his usual skill and dexterity. He did not put 



I20 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



up a pledged follower of himself or his Govern- 
ment to vindicate the policy pursued in Greece. 
He got an " independent Liberal," as the phrase 
goes, the late Mr. Roebuck, to propose a motion 

-- ~--^ vindicatinsT the 

i action of the 

Government. 

Mr. Roebuck 
was a man of 
great ability, but 
eccentric, with, 
in fact, a good 
deal of the 
" crank " about 
him. He had 
never attached 
himself to any 
Government or 
Ministerial party, 
and he had often 
attacked and 
denounced the 
policy of Lord Palmerston ; but there was a strong 
dash of what we should now call " the Jingo " in 
him, and he had rather a liking for a high-handed 
assertion of England's power. On the 24th of 
June, 1850, Mr. Roebuck proposed in the House 
of Commons a resolution declaring that the general 




John A. Roebuck 

(From a photograph by Maull & Fox, London) 



DON PACIFICO — DEATH OF SIR ROBERT PEEL 121 

foreign policy of the Government was calculated to 
maintain the honor and dignity of the country, and 
in times of unexampled difficulty to preserve peace 
between England and the various nations of the 
world. The resolution was ingeniously worded. 
It gives the mere Greek question the go-by, and 
talks only of the general policy of Lord Palmer- 
ston's Government, The principal interest of the 
debate for us now turns upon the speeches of 
Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone. Sir Robert 
Peel made his last speech in that great debate, 
but the speech was memorable mainly because it 
was his last. But Palmerston lifted himself in his 
speech to a higher position than he had ever 
occupied before. It was not a speech of great 
eloquence in the oratorical sense, but it was a 
masterpiece of dexterity and plausibility. It ap- 
pealed to every prejudice which could possibly 
affect the mind of the ordinary Briton. 

He insisted that the foreign policy of the Gov- 
ernment had been ruled by the principle which 
inspired the policy of ancient Rome, and by virtue 
of which a subject of that great empire could 
hold himself free from indignity by simply saying, 
" Civis Romanus sum." The quotation " fetched " 
the House, if we may use such a modern collo- 
quialism. It probably secured to Palmerston his 
victory of forty-six, with which the debate con- 



122 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

eluded. The whole speech occupied five hours 
in delivery, and Lord Palmerston had not a single 
note to assist him. Yet Mr. Gladstone's magnifi- 
cent reply told upon the House, highly strung as 
it was to impassioned self-admiration by Palmer- 
ston's rousing appeals. It was a great position 
for Mr. Gladstone to hold when in such a debate 
he had to maintain the principle of public and 
private justice against so skilled, so plausible, and, 
I must add, so unscrupulous an antagonist as Lord 
Palmerston. Gladstone's was, both in argument 
and in eloquence, by far the finer speech of the 
two. It was a speech which glorified for States 
as well as for individuals the principle of Chris- 
tian dealing, of self-restraint, of moderation with 
the weak, of calm consideration before a harsh 
decision had been put in force. The speech, in- 
deed, made the first full revelation of Mr. Glad- 
stone's character as a statesman. It showed that, 
above all things, he was the apostle of principle 
in political as well as in private life. It was 
nothing to him that a policy might be dazzling, 
that it might be calculated to spread abroad the 
influence of England, that it might make foreign 
nations envious and English people elate with 
self-glorification. What Mr. Gladstone asked was 
that the policy should be just, that it should be 
a policy of morality and of Christianity. John 



DON PACIFICO — DEATH OF SIR ROBERT PEEL 123 

Stuart Mill was said to have reconciled political 
economy with humanity. Gladstone endeavored 
always to reconcile politics with religion. 

" Let us recognize," he said, closing his speech, 
" and recognize with frankness, the equality of the 
weak with the strong, the principles of brother- 
hood amongst nations, and of their sacred indepen- 
dence. When we are asking for the maintenance 
of the rights which belong to our fellow-subjects 
resident in Greece, let us do as we would be done 
by, and let us pay all that respect to a feeble 
State, and to the infancy of free institutions, which 
we should desire and should exact from others 
towards their maturity and their strength. Let 
us refrain from all gratuitous and arbitrary med- 
dling in the internal concerns of other States, 
even as we should resent the same interference 
if it were attempted to be practised towards our- 
selves. If the noble lord has indeed acted on 
these principles, let the Government to which he 
belongs have your verdict in its favor; but if he 
has departed from them, as I contend, and as I 
humbly think and urge upon you that it has 
been too amply proved, then the House of Com- 
mons must not shrink from the performance of 
its duty, under whatever expectations of momen- 
tary obloquy or reproach, because we shall have 
done what is right ; we shall enjoy the peace of 



124 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

oiir own consciences, and receive, whether a little 
sooner or a little later, the approval of the public 
voice for having entered our solemn protest against 
a system of policy which we believe, nay, which 
we know, whatever may be its first aspect, must 
of necessity, in its final results, be unfavorable 
even to the security of British subjects resident 
abroad, which it professes so much to study ; un- 
favorable to the dignity of the country which the 
motion of the honorable and learned member as- 
serts it preserves, and equally unfavorable to that 
other great and sacred subject, which also it sug- 
gests to our recollection, the maintenance of peace 
with the nations of the world." 

I have thought it well to give this long quota- 
tion from the speech, partly because of its elo- 
quence, its strength, and its beauty, but still more 
because it marks a memorable step in the pro- 
gress of the orator, and shows alike the reason 
for his great triumphs and the reason, too, for 
some of his passing defeats. Nothing could be 
in broader contrast than the whole purpose of 
Lord Palmerston's speech and the whole purpose 
of the speech of Mr. Gladstone. Lord Palmer- 
ston appealed to certain national passions, which 
have always in their inspiration a certain element 
of selfishness and egotism, and even of vulgarity, 
Gladstone addressed himself to the conscience 




DON PACIFICO — DEATH OF SIR ROBERT PEEL 125 

and to the hearts of men. He had not at that 
time attained to anything like the supreme com- 
mand over the Liberal party in the House of 
Commons, and over his countrymen out-of-doors, 
which it has since been his triumph to exercise 
again and again with success. As we shall see in 
the course of this narrative, Mr. Gladstone suc- 
ceeded many times in prevailing upon England to 
do some great act of justice sim- 
ply because it was just. More 
than a quarter of a century has 
gone by since John Bright de- 
clared in tones of melancholy 
conviction that the House of 
Commons had done many things sir Alexander cock- 
which were just, but never any- ^„ ^^,^^ , , 

J ■' (from a photograph by 

thing merely because it was just. Basano, London) 

Mr. Gladstone, later on, proved that a better order 
of thingfs mio-ht be attained. He induced the 
House of Commons to do many things for no 
other reason than because they were just. The 
debate which I have been describing was illumined 
by many powerful and brilliant speeches — the 
speech of Mr. Cobden, of Lord John Russell, of 
Mr. Disraeli, and of Mr. Cockburn, afterwards Sir 
Alexander Cockburn, Lord Chief Justice of Eng- 
land. But the one speech of which it seems to 
me history will take most account is the speech 



126 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

of Mr. Gladstone. It was not merely a great 
effort of reason and of eloquence. It marked an 
era ; it revealed a man ; it foreshadowed a life's 
policy. 

That very day — for the debate lasted until 
four o'clock in the morning — was marked by a 
great national calamity. Sir Robert Peel, rid- 
ing up Constitution Hill by the railings of the 
Green Park, met with a fatal accident. His horse 
threw Sir Robert, and then fell upon him. Sir 
Robert was taken to his home, but could hardly 
be said to have rallied for a moment. He died 
on the second of July, in his sixty-third year. By 
his death Gladstone lost the leader and patron 
and friend on whom he had endeavored to mould 
his own political character. Probably outside 
Sir Robert Peel's own family no one felt the 
loss more keenly than Gladstone did. 

It is the custom in both Houses of Parliament 
to publicly allude to the loss of some great mem- 
ber of either chamber. Mr. Gladstone delivered 
a beautiful and touching speech in the House of 
Commons on the evening of the third of July, in 
which he told of the profound disappointment 
which had filled the country because of the 
premature close of such a life. " I call it," he 
said, "the premature death of Sir Robert Peel, 
for, although he has died full of years and full 



DON PACIFICO — DEATH OF SIR ROBERT PEEL 127 

of honors, yet it is a death that in human eyes 
is premature, because we had fondly hoped that, 
in whatever position Providence might assign 
to him, by the weight of his ability, by the splen- 
dor of his talents, and by the purity of his vir- 
tues, he might still have been spared to render 
us most essential services." Then he quoted 
some especially appropriate lines from Sir Walter 
Scott's poem, " Marmion " : 

Now is the stately column broke ; 
The beacon hght is quenched in smoke ; 
The trumpet's silver voice is still; 
The warder silent on the hill. 

Not every one of Gladstone's audience under- 
stood at first the exquisite appropriateness of 
these lines. They occur, indeed, in " Marmion," 
but they are lines on the death of William Pitt, 
and are in the introduction to the poem. 

The death of Sir Robert Peel had one impor- 
tant effect among ever so many others. It left 
Mr. Gladstone free to follow whatever political 
course his principles might dictate. The Peelite 
party, so called, dissolved, never, as such, to co- 
alesce again. It is impossible to suppose that 
the influence of such a man as Robert Peel 
would not have had some effect on Mr. Glad- 
stone's individual action, and we do not know 



128 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

whether Peel, with all his willingness to advance 
into new ideas, might have proved in his later 
years such a fearless advocate of reform as Mr. 
Gladstone showed himself to be. From this time 
forward we shall see that Mr. Gladstone shapes 
for himself the course of his political career. He 
was always a splendid second, a superb cham- 
pion ; but now for the first time men look to him 
for leadership, and the day is not far distant 
when he is to be recognized, whether in or out 
of ofhce, as the foremost man in the House of 
Commons. Poor little Don Pacifico ouQ^ht to 
be remembered kindly by English history for the 
mere fact that his preposterous claims gave Mr. 
Gladstone an opportunity of delivering his reply 
to Lord Palmerston, and claiming for England 
her sacred right to a policy of justice and of 
mercy. Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, spoke of 
Fox as one " on whose burning tongue truth, 
peace, and freedom hung." I have said in the 
House of Commons that the words would apply 
even more completely to Gladstone. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE NEAPOLITAN LETTERS 

In the winter of 1850 Mr. Gladstone went with 
his family to Naples. One of his children was 
ill, and the doctors had advised that a southern 
climate should be tried, and so it was determined 
that a few months should be spent in Naples. 
Mr. Gladstone, no doubt, went with no other 
idea than to watch over the recovery of his child 
and to give himself a rest from political labor. 
Doubtless he was thinking much, too, about 
quiet and happy hours to be spent in the stud- 
ies and with the books which he was o-rowino- 
to love more and more. But if he thought he 
was settling down for rest of any kind, he was 
doomed to be grievously disappointed. Yet I do 
not believe that in his heart he allowed himself 
to be disappointed, because his earnest nature 
sprang at every opportunity for doing any good 
to his fellow-man, and he never could resist the 
temptation of trying to right some wrong. " Rest 
elsewhere " was assumed as his motto by one of 
the great Netherland statesmen who joined in 

K 129 



130 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

resisting the domination of Philip II. and the 
Duke of Alva. Mr. Gladstone, too, might well 
have taken the words " Rest elsewhere " as the 
motto of his busy life. He soon found that he 
had other work cut out for him in Naples be- 
sides pensive loiterings among the ruins of Pom- 
peii, or contemplating the outlines of Capri across 
the blue bay, or climbing the sides of Vesuvius. 

The kingdom of Naples was then one of the 
worst-governed countries in Europe. The do- 
minion of the Spanish Bourbons was terribly 
oppressive, and rebellion after rebellion was con- 
stantly going on. I do not intend to enter into 
all the questions involved in the relative merits 
of Italian governments. In all European coun- 
tries then, including Great Britain, the common 
idea was to stamp out rebellion as you might 
stamp out the rinderpest. Let us admit frankly 
that the idea had not come up in Continental 
States at that time — an idea which Mr. Glad- 
stone afterwards powerfully impressed upon Eng- 
land — that the existence of rebellion was first 
of all a reason for inquiring into the existence of 
genuine grievance. No doubt Mr. Gladstone 
knew that political prisoners were treated harshly 
in Austria, in Prussia, and in Russia, and that 
they had been treated harshly in England and 
in Ireland. But, so far as I can judge, the gov- 



THE NEAPOLITAN LETTERS 131 

ernment of King Ferdinand of Naples was more 
harsh, on the whole, in its dealings with such 
enemies than any other European State at the 
time. In any case, Mr. Gladstone's was pecul- 
iarly a temperament to be impressed by the 
propinquity of events. And here he found that 
in the Naples where he settled for rest there was 
going on a system of mediaeval cruelty in the 
treatment of prisoners of state. A large number 
of Neapolitan public men who formed the oppo- 
sition had been either banished or imprisoned. 
Many thousands were lying in the jails on 
charges of political disaffection, and were there 
subjected to gross severity and insult. At once 
there was an end of Mr. Gladstone's holiday. 
He was determined to study the question for him- 
self, and from the life. He obtained the means 
of visiting the prisons. He saw the men in their 
chains. He learned who they were and what 
they had done. He found that some of them 
were men of the highest personal character and 
honor — patriots, statesmen, valuable citizens to 
any State which showed itself worthy of their 
co-operation. As the result of his inquiries and 
his observation, Mr. Gladstone, on the second 
of April, 185 1, addressed, nominally to his friend 
Lord Aberdeen, afterwards Prime Minister of 
England, but really to the whole civilized and 



132 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Christian world, a letter in which he described 
and denounced the abominations which he had 
seen, and, indeed, the whole system of King 
Ferdinand's government. He followed this up 
with other letters, and the effect which they 
produced was an almost unparalleled sensation 
throughout England and throughout Europe. 

He explained in his first letter that he had 
not gone to Naples with any idea of criticising 
the system of government there, or of looking 
out for grievances in its administration, or of 
propagating any political creeds or theories what- 
ever. He said that the work which he had 
undertaken had been forced upon him by his 
conscience, and that even after he had returned 
to his own country he felt only stronger and 
more imperative the duty of proclaiming his views. 

He very judiciously declined to go into any 
question as to the validity of the title possessed 
by the existing Government of the Two Sicilies. 
Whether the title was one of law or of force was 
not a matter for his consideration. He laid down 
three propositions : " First, that the present prac- 
tices of the Government of Naples in reference to 
real or supposed political offenders are an outrage 
upon religion, upon civilization, upon humanity, 
and upon decency. Secondly, that these prac- 
tices are certainly and even rapidly doing the 



THE NEAPOLITAN LETTERS 



133 



work of republicanism in that country — a politi- 
cal creed which has little natural root in the char- 
acter of the people. Thirdly, that, as a member 
of the Conservative party in one of the great 
family of European nations, I am compelled to 
remember that that party stands in virtual and 
real, though perhaps unconscious, alliance with 
all the established Governments of Europe as 
such, and that according to the measure of its 
influence they suffer more or less of moral detri- 
ment from its reverses, and derive strength and 
encouragement from its successes." He explained 
that he had deliberately abstained from making 
any British agencies or influences, diplomatic or 
political, responsible for his utterances. The 
charge he made against the Government of 
Naples was not one of corruption among some 
of its ofTficials, of occasional harshness or even 
cruelty to its prisoners, or the imprisonment of 
men on charges not, in his opinion, sufficiently 
proved. Charges such as these might in disturbed 
and trying times be made, with occasional justice, 
against any State in Europe. Mr. Gladstone's 
indictment against the Government of the Two 
Sicilies was that it deliberately violated its own 
constitution and trampled on its own laws. This 
point ought to be strongly impressed on the mind 
of the reader. Mr. Gladstone did not merely ac- 



134 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

cuse the Neapolitan Government of making the 
full cruel use of laws which were in themselves 
cruel. His charge against the Neapolitan Gov- 
ernment was that it broke its own code of laws 
for the purpose of inflicting on its enemies a 
severity of punishment which the laws did not 
allow, and that it obtained convictions by methods 
which the laws themselves condemned. One strik- 
ing passage from Mr. Gladstone's letter has, in- 
deed, been quoted often and often before, but I 
cannot refrain from quoting it once again : 

" It is such violation of human and written law 
as this, carried on for the purpose of violating 
every other law, unwritten and eternal, human 
and divine ; it is the wholesale persecution of 
virtue, when united with intelligence, operating 
upon such a scale that entire classes may with 
truth be said to be its object, so that the Govern- 
ment is in bitter and cruel, as well as utterly 
illegal, hostility to whatever in the nation really 
lives and moves, and forms the mainspring of 
practical progress and improvement; it is the 
awful profanation of public religion, by its noto- 
rious alliance in the governing powers with the 
violation of every moral rule under the stimulants 
of fear and vengeance ; it is the perfect prostitu- 
tion of the judicial office which has made it, under 
veils only too threadbare and transparent, the 



THE NEAPOLITAN LETTERS 135 

degraded recipient of the vilest and clumsiest forg- 
eries, got up wilfully and deliberately by the im- 
mediate advisers of the Crown for the purpose 
of destroying the peace, the freedom, ay, and 
even, if not by capital sentences, the life of men 
amongst the most virtuous, upright, intelligent, dis- 
tinguished, and refined of the whole community; 
it is the savage and cowardly system of moral, 
as well as, in a lower degree, of physical, torture, 
throuHi which the sentences obtained from the 
debased courts of justice are carried into effect. 
The effect of all this is a total inversion of all 
the moral and social ideas. Law, instead of being- 
respected, is odious. Force, and not affection, is the 
foundation of government. There is no associa- 
tion, but a violent antagonism, between the idea of 
freedom and that of order. The governing power, 
which teaches of itself that it is the image of God 
upon earth, is clothed, in the view of the over- 
whelming majority of the thinking public, with all 
the vices for its attributes. I have heard the strong 
and too true expression used — ' This is the nega- 
tion of God erected into a system of government.' " 
This last phrase passed into history and into 
literature. Mr. Gladstone gave it in the original 
Italian in which he had heard it, and its fame 
soon went abroad. Now, for the first time, Mr. 
Gladstone had proved himself to be a leader of 



136 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

truly Liberal ideas. Now there was clearly re- 
vealed in his nature that "passion of philanthropy" 
which he himself had ascribed to O'Connell, and 
which inspired him to the end. He was still far 
from being a professed Liberal in politics. He 
would still have put away from him the offer of 
a place in a Liberal administration. But his ideas 
were expanding beyond the narrow and hidebound 
limits of the old-fashioned Toryism. Let it be re- 
membered that there never was in Mr. Gladstone 
any natural inclination towards republican senti- 
ments. His whole feelings and reasonings went 
with the monarchical form of government, and he 
wrote, no doubt, with perfect sincerity when he said, 
in his letter to Lord Aberdeen, that he complained 
of the practices of the Neapolitan Government be- 
cause, among other things, they were rapidly doing 
the work of republicanism in Naples — "apolitical 
creed which has little natural or habitual root in 
the character of the people." He stood forth sim- 
ply as a leader in the cause of humanity; that, 
and that only, was the flag he unfurled. 

The letter, as might be expected, created a pro- 
found sensation throughout Europe, and indeed 
throughout the whole civilized world. A question 
was put to Lord Palmerston in the House of 
Commons on the subject, and Lord Palmerston 
expressed his belief, derived from various other 




W. E. Gladstone in 1854 

(From a photograph by Maull & Fox, London) 



THE NEAPOLITAN LETTERS 137 

sources of information, that the statements con- 
tained in Mr. Gladstone's letters gave only too 
accurate a description of the condition of things 
existing in Naples. Lord Palmerston added, how- 
ever, that the British Government had not con- 
sidered it a part of its duty to make any formal 
representations to the Neapolitan Government on 
a subject that belonged entirely to the internal 
affairs of the kingdom. But he announced that 
he had thought it right to send copies of Mr. 
Gladstone's letters, now. embodied in a pamphlet, 
to all the English Ministers at the various courts 
of Europe, directing them to give to each Gov- 
ernment a copy of the pamphlet, in the hope 
that, by affording them an opportunity of reading 
it, they might be led to use their influence in 
promoting Mr. Gladstone's object. There were, 
of course, numbers of replies, official and non- 
official, to Mr. Gladstone's charges. Some of the 
French papers made it a mere question of re- 
ligion, and tried to convey the idea that it was 
only the case of a Protestant statesman denounc- 
ing a Catholic State. It is as well to point out 
that, in one of his letters to Lord Aberdeen, Mr. 
Gladstone distinctly exempts the clergy of the 
Roman Catholic Church in Naples, as a body, 
from any implication in the conduct of the Nea- 
politan Government. The whole mass of the re- 



138 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

plies to Mr. Gladstone's letters had little or nothing 
to do with the reality of the question at issue. 

No doubt Mr. Gladstone was shown to have 
made many mistakes as to dates and details and 
persons. The most expert firm of lawyers could 
not possibly have drawn up so long and compre- 
hensive an indictment without making a mistake 
here or a mistake there. All that Mr. Gladstone 
had seen with his own eyes was beyond dispute, 
and, in fact, never was disputed. But although 
he had made the most searchino^ efforts to sret at 
the literal truth of every statement submitted to 
him, it was not possible that he could always be 
proof against unconscious exaggeration, mistake, 
or lapse of memory on the part of the narrator. 
Yet the substance and the essence of his charges 
remain absolutely immovable. Cruelties beyond 
number were shown to have been inflicted by the 
Neapolitan Government in absolute disregard and 
defiance of the constitution and the laws of the 
country. Mr. Gladstone frankly admitted the mis- 
takes which he had made, but he showed with 
clearness that the great bulk of his accusations 
was established, and that he had in some cases 
understated rather than overstated the gravity of 
the charge. He published a letter in which he 
once more vindicated his accusations. " The 
arrow has shot deep into the mark," he said, 



THE NEAPOLITAN LETTERS 139 

"and cannot be dislodged. But I have sought, 
in once more entering the field, not only to sum 
up the state of the facts in the manner nearest 
to exactitude, but likewise to close the case as I 
began it, presenting it from first to last in the 
light of a matter which is not primarily or mainly 
political, which is better kept apart from Parlia- 
mentary discussion, which has no connection what- 
ever with any peculiar idea or separate object or 
interest of England, but which appertains to the 
sphere of humanity at large, and well deserves 
the consideration of every man who feels a con- 
cern for the well-being of his race in its bearings 
on that well-being ; on the elementary demands 
of individual domestic happiness ; on the perma- 
nent maintenance of public order ; on the stability 
of thrones ; on the solution of that great problem 
which, day and night, in its innumerable forms, 
must haunt the reflections of every statesman 
both here and elsewhere — how to harmonize the 
old with the new conditions of society, and to 
mitigate the increasing stress of time and change 
upon what remains of this ancient and venerable 
fabric of the traditional civilization of Europe." 

Mr. Gladstone expressed a just pride in the 
knowledge that on the challenge of one private in- 
dividual the Government of Naples had been com- 
pelled to plead before the tribunal of public opinion, 



I40 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

and to admit its jurisdiction. He even went so far 
as to pay a compliment to the Neapolitan Govern- 
ment for having resolved on " the manly course of 
an official reply," and declared himself not without 
a hope that the result of the whole discussion might 
be a complete reform of the departments of the 
kingdom of Naples. Finally, Mr. Gladstone said : 
" I express the hope that it may not become a 
hard necessity to keep this controversy alive until 
it reaches its one possible issue, which no power 
of man can permanently intercept ; I express the 
hope that, while there is time, while there is 
quiet, while dignity may yet be saved in showing 
mercy, and in the blessed work of restoring Jus- 
tice to her seat, the Government of Naples may 
set its hand in earnest to the work of real and 
searching, however quiet and unostentatious, 
reform; that it may not become unavoidable to 
reiterate these appeals from the hand of power 
to the one common heart of mankind ; to pro- 
duce those painful documents, those harrowing 
descriptions, which might be supplied in rank 
abundance, of which I have scarcely given the 
faintest idea or sketch, and which, if they were 
laid from time to time before the world, would 
bear down like a deluge every effort at apology 
or palliation, and would cause all that has recently 
been known to be forgotten and eclipsed in deeper 



THE NEAPOLITAN LETTERS 



141 



horrors yet; lest this strength of offended and 
indignant humanity should rise up as a giant 
refreshed with wine, and, while sweeping away 
these abominations from the eye of heaven, should 
sweep away along with them things pure and 
honest, ancient, venerable, salutary to mankind, 
crowned with the glories of the past, and still 
capable of bearing future fruit." 

There can be no doubt that the publication 
of the letters and the vast-spreading controversy 
which sprang from it did much good, even to the 
political systems of the kingdom of Naples itself. 
No civilized Government can be thus compelled 
to plead its cause before the bar of universal 
public opinion without finding itself constrained to 
review its own actions and to revise some of its 
own practices. The prison system and the politi- 
cal trials of the kingdom of Naples began to im- 
prove a little from that day. But the kingdom of 
Naples was not allowed much time for improve- 
ment. Within less than ten years a revolution had 
swept it away ; nor does there appear at the pres- 
ent moment the remotest prospect of a return of 
the Spanish Bourbons to rule in any part of Italy. 
Mr. Gladstone taught a lesson which it is neces- 
sary to teach to most Governments. I know, in- 
deed, of no Government, except that of the United 
States alone, which is not under strong temptation 



142 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

every now and then to deal harshly with its political 
enemies, and even to strain the laws agrainst them. 
I have heard Mr. Gladstone's own words quoted 
again and again in the House of Commons as a 
lesson which ought to be an example to English 
Governments in their dealings with political pris- 
oners. I can only say, so much the better. The 
moral of Mr. Gladstone's letters was never meant to 
apply to the Government of Naples alone. It ap- 
plies to every State where, in times of disturbance, 
the first thought is how to punish the enemy, and 
all thought of finding out the grievance, if griev- 
ance there be, is waved away into the vague future. 
I may remark that many even of Mr. Gladstone's 
admirers, then and since, were of opinion that 
there was something in the course he took which 
was incompatible with the attitude assumed by 
him in replying to Lord Palmerston on the Don 
Pacifico question. The course of reasoning is 
somewhat curious. Mr. Gladstone had denounced 
in the House of Commons " the vain conception 
that we, forsooth, have a mission to be the censors 
of vice and folly, of abuse and imperfection, among 
the other countries of the world." It is pointed 
out as something strange that a public man who 
uttered such opinions should have almost straight- 
way made himself the censor of vice and folly, of 
abuse and imperfection, in the foreign kingdom 



THE NEAPOLITAN LETTERS 143 

of Naples. Five minutes of reflection ought to be 
enough to show to any one that there is no incon- 
sistency whatever between the one position and 
the other. Mr, Gladstone objected to the English 
Government, the English State, intervening in the 
affairs of Greece to set right certain defects of 
the Greek system, and with a strong hand seizing 
and confiscating Greek vessels to satisfy a prepos- 
terous claim for all but imaginary damages. What 
on earth has this contention to do with the right 
of a private individual to expose a terrible griev- 
ance seen with his own eyes in the prison system 
of a foreign country ? We might as well say that 
Howard the philanthropist, because he visited for- 
eign prisons and exposed the horrors of them, 
would have been inconsistent if he had objected 
to the English Government sending an invading 
army into each of these foreign countries in order 
to compel them to set their prison-houses in order. 
One might as well say, to come down to a smaller 
illustration, that the Member of Parliament who 
objected to our intervention in the domestic affairs 
of France or Italy is guilty of inconsistency if after- 
wards he writes a letter to the London newspapers 
to complain of the loss of his luggage on the 
French or Italian frontier. Mr. Gladstone acted 
with perfect consistency in these instances ; and, 
indeed, the best possible way of rendering inter- 



144 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

vention in the domestic affairs of foreign States 
unnecessary is such an appeal to the pubhc con- 
science of the civihzed world as that which Mr. 
Gladstone made when he brought the Neapolitan 
Government, by his own voice and his own ac- 
tion, before the tribunal of European opinion. 

He was then and since a strong friend and cham- 
pion of Italian unity and therefore many accusa- 
tions were made against him on that ground by 
those who upheld the Austrian possession of Lom- 
bardy, and the rule of the King of Naples, and the 
maintenance of the ducal systems of Tuscany and 
Modena and other places. The whole controversy 
is long since dead and buried, and I, for one, have 
not the slightest wish to revive it. But one of the 
charges made against Mr. Gladstone was that he 
personally associated himself with Italian conspir- 
acy, and that he was the intimate friend of Mazzini. 
The only comment I have to make on this latter 
charge is that I myself heard Mr. Gladstone, in 
the House of Commons, many years ago, say, 
with emphasis, " Mr. Speaker, I never saw Signor 
Mazzini." I do not infer from these words that 
Mr. Gladstone meant in any way to disparage 
Mazzini or to associate himself with the charges 
that were made from time to time against the 
Italian leader. I merely note the fact that Mr. 
Gladstone " never saw Signor Mazzini." 



CHAPTER XII 

THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL 

Mr. Gladstone came out of one controversy 
into another. The excitement caused by the pub- 
Hcation of his letters to Lord Aberdeen was thrown 
into the shade for the time by the passionate con- 
troversy in England on what was called the Papal 
Aggression. The then Pope, Pius IX., had made 
up his mind to give local titles to the Catholic 
Archbishops and Bishops in England. Ever since 
the days of the great Oxford Movement led by 
John Henry Newman, secessions had been going 
on amono: a certain class of devout and intellectual 
men from the Anglican Church to the Church of 
Rome. The Pope and his advisers might not 
unnaturally have been led into the belief that this 
movement indicated a tendency on the part of the 
whole people of England to become reunited with 
the ancient Church. As a matter of fact, the 
movement, as I have said, concerned only certain 
classes of pious, educated, and intellectual men. 
The whole vast bulk of the middle and lower 
classes of England had absolutely nothing to do 

L 145 



146 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



with it, and cared nothing about it. A very large, 
far too large, proportion of the English lower- 
middle and working class have little or no interest 




John Henry, Cardinal Newman 

(From a photograph by Mr. H. J. Whitlock of Birmingham) 



in religion of any kind. But the Pope and his 
advisers mistook the significance of the " Oxford 
Movement," as it is called, and thought it meant 
something like a national upheaval. 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL 



147 



At any rate, the course taken by the Pope does 
not seem to us anything very formidable or strin- 
gent. Pius the Ninth issued a Papal Bull directing 
the establishment in England of a hierarchy of 
Bishops deriving their titles from their actual sees. 
The Bishops and Archbishops were there already, 
and were recognized and protected by the State ; 
only they were called Bishops of Mesopotamia, or 
of Melipotamus, or of Emmaus, or what not, " in 
partibus infidelium" The Pope's Bull simply 
ordered them to call themselves Archbishops or 
Bishops of whatever division of England they hap- 
pened to reside in. The first Archbishop appointed 
was Cardinal Wiseman, who now became Arch- 
bishop of Westminster. The Cardinal had been for 
ten years living quietly in England under the title 
of Bishop of Melipotamus. It is hard at this dis- 
tance of time to get one's self back to any clear un- 
derstanding of the mood of mind which made any 
Protestant care a straw whether Cardinal Wiseman 
was called Archbishop of Westminster or Bishop 
of Melipotamus. To make the whole agitation 
still more difficult to understand, the Catholic 
Archbishops and Bishops in Ireland always called 
themselves by their local titles, Archbishop of Dub- 
lin, Archbishop of Tuam, and so on, and nobody 
made the slightest objection. 

But the truth probably is that the Pope's Bull 



148 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

was issued at an unlucky time so far as regarded 
the tempers of Englishmen, coming as it did just 
in the wake of the Oxford Movement, which much 
dismayed and offended the ordinary Englishman. 
It was taken as an evidence that the Pope thought 
that he had a right now to annex the whole of Eng- 
land to the Papal Church. Anyhow, a fury of anti- 
Catholic passion flamed over the greater jDart of 
England. Men usually calm and sensible lost their 
heads over the affair. There were riots here, there, 
and everywhere. Roman Catholic churches in 
many towns were attacked and broken into ; Prot- 
estant mobs were encountered by Roman Catholic 
mobs, and a perfect saturnalia of disorder in speech 
and in action prevailed throughout the Kingdom. 
Lord Palmerston looked the matter very quietly 
in the face. He did not attempt to conceal in pri- 
vate letters his contempt for the whole anti-Papal 
agitation, but, like a cool man of business, he saw 
that something would have to be done to satisfy the 
public clamor. The Queen herself, in a letter to 
her aunt, the Duchess of Gloucester, expressed 
her deep regret at the " unchristian and intolerant 
spirit exhibited by many people at the public meet- 
ings." " I cannot bear," she wrote, " to hear the 
violent abuse of the Catholic religion, which is so 
painful and so cruel towards the many good and 
innocent Roman Catholics." 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL 149 

However, something had to be done, and I need 
hardly say that useful legislation seldom is the 
result of the vague conviction that something has 
to be done. Lord John Russell was then Prime 
Minister, and he brought in a bill prohibiting 
under penalty the use of a title taken by a Catholic 
Bishop from any see in England, or, indeed, from 
any place whatever in Great Britain, and rendering 
void all acts done by or bequests made to persons 
under such titles. Probably never before in mod- 
ern times has a measure been carried in the face of 
so powerful and intellectual an opposition. Our 
chief interest in it now attaches to Mr. Gladstone's 
part in the long debates on the measure. 

It may fairly be said that then, for the first time, 
Mr. Gladstone assumed the position of a great Par- 
liamentary leader. He led the opposition to the 
bill simply as a question of public liberty. He 
contended that if you tolerate the Roman Catholic 
faith at all, you are compelled to allow it the use of 
whatever forms and names and titles it thinks fit 
to adopt. Men like Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, Sir 
James Graham, Mr. Roebuck, followed with enthu- 
siasm the leadership of Mr. Gladstone. Protestant 
public men so intensely devoted to the interest of 
their Church as Mr. Roundell Palmer, afterwards 
Lord Selborne, and Mr. Beresford Hope, stood 
resolutely by Mr. Gladstone's side. Mr. Disraeli 



150 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



scoffed at the bill, although he declared that he 
would not take the trouble to oppose its introduc- 
tion ; but his language of contempt was as strong 
as that of Mr. Bright or Mr. Roebuck. On the 

other hand, some 
of the extreme 
Protestants like 
Sir Robert Ingiis 
found fault with 
the bill on the 
ground that it 
did not go half 
far enough in its 
stringency. It 
would not be too 
much to say that, 
except for Lord 
John Russell 
alone, the whole 
intellect of Par- 
liament was 
strongly against 
the bill. Yet the 
measure was carried by an immense majority. 
Something had to be done to satisfy popular 
outcry. Lord Palmerston made the whole matter 
clear in one of his letters since published. " We 
must," he said, "bring in a measure. The country 




RouNDELL Palmer, First Earl of Selborne 
(From a photograph by Maull & Fox, London) 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL 151 

would not be satisfied without some legislative 
enactment. We shall make it as gentle as pos- 
sible." 

It proved in its application to be very gentle 
indeed. In fact, no attempt whatever was made to 
put it into practice. Cardinal Wiseman still called 
himself Archbishop of W^estminster, and no one 
took any steps to prevent him from so doing. The 
strange popular outcry was satisfied, and it soon 
cried itself to sleep. Every thinking man saw, 
meanwhile, that out of those debates on the Eccle- 
siastical Titles Bill Mr. Gladstone had emerged a 
■ ereat Parliamentary leader. The most brilliant 
and impressive speeches he had ever made up to 
that time were delivered in opposition to Lord John 
Russell's measure. It has been said that Mr. Glad- 
stone had decided leanings towards the Roman 
Catholic Church. No doubt a Church so venera- 
ble, with so picturesque and artistic a ritual, a 
Church "in whose bosom," as Thackeray put it, 
" so many generations of saints and sages have 
rested," could not but appeal to all that was poetic 
and all that was devotional in Mr. Gladstone's 
nature. But I do not believe that he had any 
sympathy with the especial doctrines of the Roman 
Catholic Church. It was at one time assumed by 
many that Mr. Gladstone was likely to be swept 
away by the Newman movement into Catholicism. 



152 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

I have, however, spoken with men who were con- 
temporaries of Mr. Gladstone at Oxford, who had 
themselves since become Roman Catholics, and 
who told me they never saw reason to believe that 
Mr. Gladstone was likely to join the Church of 
Rome. The whole controversy about the Ecclesi- 
astical Titles Bill was with him only a question 
between genuine liberty and petty persecution. 
Nothing seems to me to be more honorable in the 
career of a public man than the part that Mr. Glad- 
stone took in all those long and fierce debates. 

Twenty years after, Mr. Gladstone had the satis- 
faction of quietly repealing the Ecclesiastical Titles 
Bill, w^hich he had so earnestly and generously 
opposed. 

We have no great concern now with the details 
of the struggles between governments and parties 
in the far-off days of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. 
The one direct interest, however, which we still 
have in those struggles is the fact that they pushed 
to the front two men who were destined to be al- 
most lifelong antagonists. I speak, it need hardly 
be said, of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli. Lord 
John Russell's Government was crumbling away, 
and, after a number of defeats, none of which was 
in itself of capital importance. Lord John Russell 
thought it necessary that he and his colleagues 
should resign. Lord Stanley was invited to form a 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL 153 

new administration, and so little certain was it even 
then whether Mr. Gladstone had or had not severed 
himself from his old Tory associations that Lord 
Stanley, according to a rumor which every one be- 
lieved, offered to Mr. Gladstone a place in the Con- 
servative Government with the office of Foreign 
Secretary. Lord Stanley, however, vainly at- 
tempted to form an administration. Lord Aber- 
deen was then invited to try his hand, and he, too, 
could not see his way to success. There was actu- 
ally nothing to be done but for Lord John Russell 
and his colleagues to return to office. A Govern- 
ment thus set up again by sheer necessity, and be- 
cause there was no other set of men who would take 
the responsibility, never could be anything but a 
failure in England. Lord Palmerston did his best 
to make the failure complete. He was a most inde- 
pendent and, to use a modern slang word, "push- 
ful " Foreign Secretary. He did exactly what he 
liked, without consulting anybody. He had acted 
repeatedly in defiance of Lord John Russell's warn- 
ings and in defiance even of protests from the 
Queen herself. But he carried the joke a little too 
far when he expressed to Count Walewski, the 
French Ambassador in London, his entire approval 
of Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat of the second of 
December, 185 1. Lord Palmerston was actually 
dismissed from office — the last time, so far as my 



154 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE-S LIFE 



memory serves me, that such an event occurred in 
EngHsh history. Nothing, however, could daunt 
or dishearten Lord Pahnerston. He was up to the 
front again after this tremendous blow, smiling, and 
as if nothing particular had happened. Within a 

very short time 
he managed, 
with the Tories 
to help him, to 
defeat Lord John 
Russell on a 
measure that has 
now no histori- 
cal importance 
other than in 
that fact. Lord 
John Russell 
went out of of- 

Edward G. S. Stanley, Fourteenth Earl of IlCe, and waS Suc- 
ceeded by Lord 
Stanley, who had 
now, on his father's death, become Earl of Derby, 
with Mr. Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer 
and leader of the House of Commons. This was 
Mr. Disraeli's first appearance as a Minister of the 
Crown. People in general were greatly amused at 
the notion of " Vivian Grey " becoming a Cabinet 
Minister, " Sidonia " accepted as a British states- 




Derby 

(From an engraving by Mr. D. J. Pound) 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL 1 55 

man, " Coningsby " undertaking the responsibility 
of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Disraeli's first 
budo-et, however, was not a badly managed piece of 
business, all things considered. The only object 
was to carry the Government decently over the 
session. Then there came a dissolution, and Mr. 
Gladstone was again elected for Oxford with a 
greatly increased miajority. The results of the gen- 
eral election did not materially affect the balance of 
parties, and the Government of Lord Derby re- 
turned to office. Mr. Disraeli now had to make an 
attempt at a real working budget, and he certainly 
did not succeed in the effort. Mr. Gladstone 
stopped the way. 



CHAPTER XIII 

GLADSTONE AND DISRAELI AS RIVALS 

In 1852 began the long Parliamentary duel 
between Gladstone and Disraeli, which ended only 
when, at the close of the session of 1876, Mr. 
Disraeli left the House of Commons and took 
his place, as he had always meant to do sooner 
or later, in the House of Lords. The debate 
was on Mr. Disraeli's budget, and it ended in 
the defeat of the Tory Government. Mr. Disraeli 
never, before or after, spoke with greater power 
and sarcasm and bitterness and passion than in 
his final speech in that debate. It was about 
two o'clock in the morning when Mr. Gladstone 
sprang up to reply to him. " Gladstone has got 
his work cut out for him," was the comment of 
one of the listeners when Mr. Gladstone rose to 
his feet. He had his work cut out for him, but 
he was equal to the work, and he soon made 
it quite clear that he was going to do it. Many 
members of the House and listeners in the' 
strangers' galleries thought it hardly possible 
that, at that hour of the morning, and after such 

156 



GLADSTONE AND DISRAELI AS RIVALS 



157 



a speech as Disraeli's, any further impression 
could be made even by Mr. Gladstone. But be- 
fore he had got far into his speech every one 
felt that Gladstone was making a greater impres- 
sion than even Disraeli had produced. It has 
to be borne in mind also that Gladstone's speech 
was necessarily unprepared, for he replied point 
by point, and almost sentence by sentence, to 
the speech of Mr. Disraeli. It seems to me that 
from that moment Mr. Gladstone's position in 
the House of Commons was completely estab- 
lished. 

Then, as I have said, began the long rivalry 
of these two great Parliamentary athletes. In 
every important debate the one man answered 
the other. Disraeli followed Gladstone, or Glad- 
stone followed Disraeli. It was not unlike the 
rivalry between Fox and Pitt, for it was a rivalry 
of temperament and character as well as of pub- 
lic position and of political principle. Gladstone 
and Disraeli seemed formed by nature to be an- 
tagonists. In character, in temper, in tastes, and 
in style of speaking the men were utterly unlike 
each other. One of Gladstone's defects was his 
tendency to take everything too seriously. One 
of Disraeli's defects was his tendency to take 
nothing seriously. Disraeli was strongest in reply 
when the reply had to consist only of sarcasm. 



158 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



|||„iI'|''||m 1, ii:'|i,:";ii|ii,| Ill',,";; , / 



He had a marvellous gift of phrase-making. He 
could impale a whole policy with an epithet. He 
could dazzle the House of Commons with a para- 
dox. He could throw ridicule on a political 
party by two or three happy and reckless adjec- 
tives. He described one of Cobden's free-trade 

meetings in some 
country place as an 
assembly made up of 
" a grotesque and 
Hudibrastic crew." 
It is not likely that 
one of Cobden's 
meetings was more 
grotesque or Hudi- 
brastic than any other 
public meeting any- 
where. But that did 
not concern the 
House of Commons ; 
the description was 
humorous and effective ; it made people laugh, 
and the adjectives stuck. Disraeli was never 
happy in statement. When he had to explain 
a policy, financial or other, he might really be 
regarded as a very dull speaker. Gladstone 
was especially brilliant in statement. He could 
give to an exposition of figures the fascination 




Benjamin Disraeli 

(From an old portrait representing him at the time 
of his entering Parliament) 



GLADSTONE AND DISRAELI AS RIVALS 159 

of a romance or a poem. Gladstone never could 
be, under any possible conditions, a dull speaker. 
He was no equal of Disraeli's in the gift of sar- 
casm and what Disraeli himself called " flouts 
and jeers." But in a reply he swept his antag- 
onist before him with his marvellous eloquence, 
compounded of reason and passion. 

I heard nearly all the great speeches made by 
both the men in that Parliamentary duel which 
lasted for so many years. My own observation 
and judgment gave the superiority to Mr. Glad- 
stone all through, but I quite admit that Disraeli 
stood up well to his great opponent, and that it 
was not always easy to award the prize of victory. 
The two men's voices were curiously unlike. Dis- 
raeli had a deep, low, powerful voice, heard every- 
where throughout the House, but having little 
variety or music in it. Gladstone's voice was 
tuned to a higher note, was penetrating, resonant, 
liquid, and full of an exquisite modulation and 
music which gave new shades of meaning to 
every emphasized word. The ways of the men 
were in almost every respect curiously unlike. 
Gladstone was always eager for conversation. He 
loved to talk to anybody about anything. Disraeli, 
even among his most intimate friends, was given 
to frequent fits of absolute and apparently gloomy 
silence. Gladstone, after his earlier Parliamentary 



l6o THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

days, became almost entirely indifferent to dress. 
Disraeli always turned out in the newest fashion, 
and down to his latest years went in the get-up 
of a young man about town. Not less different 
were the characters and temperaments of the two 
men. Gladstone changed his political opinions 
many times during his long Parliamentary career. 
But he changed his opinions only in deference to 
the force of a growing conviction, and to the 
recognition of facts and conditions which he could 
no longer conscientiously dispute. Nobody prob- 
ably ever knew what Mr. Disraeli's real opinions 
were upon any political question, or whether he 
had any real opinions at all. Gladstone began as 
a Tory, and gradually became changed into a 
Radical. Disraeli began as an extreme Radical 
under the patronage of Daniel O'Connell, and 
changed into a Tory. But everybody knew that 
Gladstone was at first a sincere Tory, and at 
last a sincere Radical. Nobody knew, or, indeed, 
cared, whether Disraeli ever was either a sincere 
Radical or a sincere Tory. It is not, perhaps, an 
unreasonable thing to assume that Disraeli soon 
began to feel that there was no opening for him 
on the Liberal benches of the House of Com- 
mons. He was determined to get on. He knew 
that he had the capacity for success. He was 
not in the least abashed by session after session 



GLADSTONE AND DISRAELI AS RIVALS i6l 

of absolute failure in Parliament, but he probably 
began to see that he must choose his ground. 
On the Liberal side were men like Palmerston, 
Lord John Russell, Gladstone, Cobden, and Bright. 
On the Tory side there were respectable country 
gentlemen. Since the removal of Lord Stanley 
to the Upper House there was not a single man 
on the Tory benches who could for a moment be 
compared, as regards eloquence and intellect, with 
Disraeli. Given a perfectly open mind, it is not 
difficult to see how an ambitious man would make 
his choice. The choice was made accordingly, and 
Mr. Disraeli soon became the only possible leader 
of the Tory party in the House of Commons. 

Now that it has all passed into history, and 
has become merely a question of what might be 
called artistic interest, I think we may be thank- 
ful that Disraeli made up his mind to cast in his 
lot with the Tory party. We have, at all events, 
the advantage from it that he was thus thrown 
into permanent rivalry with Gladstone, and that 
we have the long succession of Parliamentary 
duels to read of and to remember. On more 
than one occasion, too, Disraeli was able, accord- 
ing to his own phrase, to " educate his party " up 
to some really liberal measure. In that way he 
was able to serve the country, although most 
likely his immediate idea was to keep his party 



l62 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

still in office. But I confess that, for myself, I 
am not thinking so much of this fact when I ex- 
press my thankfulness that Disraeli joined the 
Tories. The liberal measures would have come 
in due course of time whether Disraeli helped 
them or tried to hinder them. But I cannot esti- 
mate how much the Parliamentary history of recent 
times would have lost in interest if Gladstone and 
Disraeli had been on the same side in politics. 
What would become of the chief interest and fas- 
cination of the Iliad if Achilles and Hector had 
been allies and companions in arms ? 

Gladstone was needed to bring out all that 
was keenest and brightest in the Parliamentary 
eloquence of Disraeli. Gladstone, on the other 
hand, would have been literally thrown away on 
any Tory antagonist beneath the level of Disraeli. 
Never since Disraeli left the House of Commons 
has Gladstone found a Tory antagonist worth 
his crossing swords with. Among other differ- 
ences between the two men were differences in 
education. Disraeli never had anything like the 
classical training of Gladstone. The mind of 
Gladstone was steeped in the glorious literature 
of Greece and of Rome, about which Disraeli 
knew little or nothing. Disraeli could not read 
Latin or Greek; he could not speak French. In 
a famous speech of his delivered in the House of 



GLADSTONE AND DISRAELI AS RIVALS 163 

Commons at the height of his fame and in oppo- 
sition to a measure of Gladstone's, Disraeli made 
it plain that he thought the meaning of "univer- 
sity" was a place where everything was taught 
— a place of universal instruction. In another 
famous speech he described John Henry New- 
man's "Apologia pro Vita Sua" as an "apology" 
for Newman's life. When the Congress of Berlin 
sat in 1878, and was presided over by Prince 
Bismarck, the great Prussian statesman opened 
and conducted the business in English. Disraeli, 
accompanied by Lord Salisbury, represented Eng- 
land at the Congress, and it was at first supposed 
that Bismarck spoke English simply as a mark of 
compliment to England. But Bismarck kindly 
spoke English because it had been made known 
to him that Disraeli could not speak French. 

It must be admitted, however, that all this tells 
to a certain extent in Disraeli's favor. Among; 
the contrasts between the lives and ways of the 
two great rivals must be noticed the contrast 
between the conditions under which they started 
into public life. Everything that care, culture, 
and money could do had been done for Glad- 
stone. His father had started him in public life 
with an ample fortune. Disraeli was the son of 
a very clever and distinguished literary man, who 
was successful enough as a sort of genre artist 



l64 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

with the pen, but who could not give his son 
much of a launch in life. Disraeli got but a very 
scrambling education, and was for some time set 
to work in a lawyer's office. His early extrava- 
gances got him into much trouble at the outset 
of his career. He had luxurious Oriental tastes 
and fancies, and, besides, he was determined to 
get into the House of Commons at any cost, 
and the expenses of election in those days would 
seem almost incredible to our more modest times. 
It was no very uncommon thing for a man to 
spend 100,000 pounds in contesting a county. 
Disraeli at first contested only boroughs, but even 
a borough contest meant huge expenditure. He 
had therefore nothing like the secure and unhar- 
assed entrance into politics which was the good 
fortune of his great rival. Another difference 
between the two men was found in their atti- 
tudes towards general culture. Gladstone had a 
positive passion for studying everything, for 
knowing something about everything. He was 
unwilling to let any subject elude his grasp. He 
had tastes the most varied and all but universal. 
He loved pictures and statues and architecture 
and old china and medals and bric-a-brac of every 
kind, and he had made himself acquainted with 
the history of all these subjects. There was 
almost nothing about which he could not talk 



GLADSTONE AND DISRAELI AS RIVALS 165 

with fluency and with the keenest interest. He 
had a thirst for information, and it was a pleasure 
to him to get out of every man all that the man 
could tell him about his own particular subject. 
Although a great and indeed a tremendous talker, 
Gladstone was not one of the men who insist upon 
having all the talk to themselves. His thirst for 
information would in any case have prevented him 
from being a talker only. He knew that every 
man and woman he met had something to tell 
him, and he gave every one ample opportunity. 

Disraeli possessed no such ubiquitous tastes and 
no such varied knowledge. He had travelled more 
than Gladstone ever travelled, but he brought back 
little from his wanderings. His life, indeed, ran 
in a narrow groove. Political ambition was his 
idol, and he lived in its worship. A writer of 
brilliant novels, he could hardly be called in the 
highest sense a literary man. His novels were 
undoubtedly brilliant, and brought him in every 
way a great success. He was probably the only 
English author who ever compelled his English 
public to read political novels. But he had no 
particular affection for literature or for literary 
men. Not very long after Thackeray's death 
Disraeli satirized the author of " Vanity Fair " 
most bitterly and recklessly in the person of one 
of the characters in " Endymion." Disraeli thor- 



l66 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

oughly enjoyed the life of the House of Commons 
for its own sake. Gladstone probably enjoyed it 
most for the opportunities which it gave him of 
asserting his principles and pushing forward his 
reforms. Of both men it is only fair to say that 
during their long political struggle not one breath 
of scandal touched their public or private life. 
On one or two occasions when an accusation was 
made against either man of having shown a spirit 
of favoritism in some public appointment, the 
charge was easily disproved, and indeed would 
not have been seriously believed in by many 
people in any case. Disraeli was once, while in 
office, charged with having given a certain small 
appointment to a political supporter. He was 
able to prove at once, first that the recipient of 
the place was the man best qualified for its work, 
and, next; that the recipient of the place had 
been a steady political opponent of Disraeli and 
the Tory party. It is satisfactory to know that 
in the higher walks of English political life the 
atmosphere has for many years been pure and 
untainted. The days of Bolingbroke and Walpole 
and the Godolphins had long passed away, and 
even the hard-drinking, reckless, gambling temper 
of the times of Fox and Pitt was totally unknown 
to the principal associates of Disraeli and Glad- 
stone. In every way, therefore, these two great 



GLADSTONE AND DISRAELI AS RIVALS 167 

rivals were worthy of the rivalry. I have often 
thought that of late years Mr. Gladstone in the 
House of Commons must have sadly missed his 
old antagonist. 

Gladstone had a profound sympathy with Italy 
— a strong passion for Italy — very much like 
the passion which Byron had for Greece. He 
loved the language, the literature, the country, 
and the people. He spoke Italian with marvel- 
lous fluency and accuracy. An eminent Italian 
told me once that Gladstone, when speaking 
Italian, fell quite naturally into the very move- 
ment and gestures of an Italian. If Gladstone, 
he said, were to address the representative cham- 
ber in Rome, every one present would take him 
for an Italian — only it was possible that the Tus- 
can might think he was a Roman, and that the 
Roman would set him down as a Tuscan. When- 
ever he needed rest he almost always sought it 
under the skies of Italy. When, at a later 
period of his career, he visited the Ionian Islands 
as Lord High Commissioner on behalf of the 
Sovereign of England, he addressed all the public 
assemblies in the islands and on the mainland, 
in Athens and elsewhere, in Italian. The pro- 
nunciation of Greek which is taught at the Eng- 
lish universities would have rendered it almost 
impossible for an English scholar, however well 



l68 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

acquainted with the Hterary language of Greece, 
to make himself intelligible to a modern Greek 
audience. Gladstone spoke French with perfect 
fluency, but with a very marked accent. Indeed, 
his speeches in the House of Commons were 
always delivered with an accent which told un- 
mistakably of the " North Countree." From his 
forbears he got the tones of Scotland ; and then 
Lancashire has a distinct accent all to herself. 
I have a strong impression that some at least of 
the influence of Gladstone's finest speeches in 
the House of Commons would have been a little 
marred if they had been delivered in the common- 
place accent of West End London society. 




John Bright as he appeared in 1853 

(From a photograph by Maull & Fox, London) 



CHAPTER XIV 

GLADSTONE AND BRIGHT 

The Houses of Parliament have had in my 
memory three really great orators : the Lord 
Derby whom I have already mentioned, Mr. Glad- 
stone, and Mr. Bright. All three came from the 
" North Countree." A high and mighty London 
weekly paper once said : " What a pity it is that 
Mr. Bright cannot catch the tone of the House 
of Commons ! " The retort was obvious — What 
a pity it is that the House of Commons cannot 
catch the tone of Mr. Bright ! 

Gladstone and Bright soon became strong friends. 
The two men were curiously unlike in general 
ways and in bringing up. Bright was not, in 
the higher sense, a man of education — he cer- 
tainly was not a man of culture. He had been 
quietly brought up, with what might be called 
a plain commercial education. He knew little 
of Latin, and next to nothing of Greek. He 
could read French, and could speak it fairly 
well. He was not widely read, but he had a 
marvellous appreciation of all the shades of mean- 

169 



I/O THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

ing which the EngHsh language was capable of 
putting into expression. He was not a reader of 
many books, but the books that he really cared 
for he " loved with a love that was more than 
love." He adored the Bible and Milton, and he 
learned to delight in Dante, although only through 
the medium of a translation. One of his happiest 
quotations was taken from Dante and made in a 
speech on the condition of Ireland. 

His style as an orator in the House of Com- 
mons was pure, simple, strong, and thrilling. He 
had a voice which was perhaps, on the whole, 
superior even to that of Gladstone himself. As 
an orator, I should say that he now and then in 
his greatest speeches soared to a height which 
Gladstone never reached. But as a debater he 
was not to be compared with Gladstone. As he 
put it himself : " I can stand up to a fight well 
enough every now and then, but Gladstone's foot 
is always in the stirrup." One passion was com- 
mon to both the men — the passion for following 
in the path where justice and the improvement 
of the condition of one's fellows seemed directly 
to guide. For a long time Gladstone was a great 
source of strength to Bright, and Bright was a 
great source of strength to Gladstone. Bright did, 
probably, his greatest work outside the House of 
Commons, and Gladstone certainly his greatest 



GLADSTONE AND BRIGHT 



171 



work inside it. Bright had a gift of rich Anglo- 
Saxon humor which Gladstone could not rival. 
It used to be noticed that Disraeli, great master 
of sarcastic phrases as he was, never would go in 
for a passage of arms with Bright. The hand 
of Bright had a terribly good-humored strength 
in its knock-down blow. It was like the buffet 
of Richard Cceur de Lion in Sir Walter Scott's 
" Ivanhoe." Bright was for many years of his 
life absolutely devoted to Gladstone's leadership 
in home affairs. He had little or no sympathy 
with Gladstone's enthusiasm about the cause of 
this or that foreign people. He never indulged 
in expressions of rapture about the national cause 
of Italy. This came in great measure from his 
not unreasonable conviction that the welfare of 
Eno-land herself and of her colonies ouQ:ht to 
be the first consideration of English statesman- 
ship. He was utterly opposed to most of Eng- 
land's interventions in foreign affairs. He justly 
condemned the policy of the Crimean War from 
the very beginning, and he was denounced and 
abused for his utterances, which now represent 
the opinion of all rational Englishmen. But he 
showed that his was not a merely insular mind 
when the Civil War in the United States broke 
out and when the sympathy of the vast majority 
of those who considered themselves " society " in 



1/2 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Great Britain was ostentatiously given to the 
Southern side. He stood up for the welfare of 
the people of India as opposed to the interests 
of those who went out there to push trade, to 
make money, or to earn distinction. He was 
for many years a friend of Ireland when friends 
of Ireland were rare figures in the Parliament 
House at Westminster. For years and years he 
stood up a brave, persistent, and splendid cham- 
pion for justice to the Irish people. Nor even 
when, in his closing years, he fell away from 
Mr. Gladstone on this very question of Ireland's 
national claims, did the Irish people feel any- 
thing but a deep and poignant regret that the 
strong arm which had supported them so long 
should be for some strange reason suddenly with- 
drawn from them. 

For the present, however, he stood by Glad- 
stone's side, and was by far the most powerful 
supporter Gladstone had in the House of Com- 
mons or out of it. 



CHAPTER XV 

A COALITION GOVERNMENT 

I MUST return to the duel between Mr. Gladstone 
and Mr. Disraeli and its immediate consequences 
upon English political life. Mr. Gladstone's 
speech completely crushed the whole of Mr. Dis- 
raeli's financial scheme. The budget was there 
one hour, and it was gone the next. When the 
division came to be taken in the early morning of 
December 17, 1S52, the Government was found 
to be in a minority of nineteen. 

Lord Derby at once wrote to the Queen an- 
nouncing his resignation. It would be needless to 
say that the time was one of intense political pas- 
sion. Mr. Greville, in his diary, gives us one curi- 
ous and, let us hope, unique illustration of heated 
feeling among some of the Tories. On the twenti- 
eth of December, Mr. Greville tells us, " twenty 
rufhans of the Carlton Club" — thus he describes 
them, and no doubt justly — gave a dinner to a 
Tory political colleague who had been charged 
with bribery at an election and had got off with- 
out any serious condemnation. " After dinner," 

173 



174 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Mr. Greville says, " when they got drunk, they 
went upstairs, and, finding Gladstone alone in the 
drawing-room, some of them proposed to throw 
him out of the window. This they did not quite 
dare do, but contented themselves with giving 
some insulting message or order to the waiter and 
then went away." I cannot attempt to vouch for 
the truth of this story, but I remember quite well 
that the story was told at the time, and was gen- 
erally believed to have some truth in it. As I 
heard the tale at the time, the proposal was to 
" fling Gladstone out of the window in the direc- 
tion of the Reform Club," which is, in fact, the 
very nearest public building. This version of the 
story would make it seem more like a coarse joke 
than like any proposal with a serious purpose. 
But nothing can be more certain than the fact 
that about that time Gladstone was bitterly de- 
tested by all the ignorant and infatuated followers 
of the Tory party. 

When Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli and their 
colleagues resigned, the men who came into power 
had to form a coalition government. The Whigs 
could not make a government of their own. The 
Peelites were not strong enough to think of form- 
ing an administration ; and the time for a Radical 
Cabinet was still very far off. The new Govern- 
ment, therefore, was a combination of Whigs and 



A COALITION GOVERNMENT 



175 



Peelites, with one or two " philosophical Radicals," 
as they were then called, sincere and earnest Radi- 
cal speakers, that is to say, but not fighting men 
like Cobden and Bright. Lord Aberdeen became 




Windsor Castle 

(From a photograph by Mr. Wilson, London) 

Prime Minister, and Mr. Gladstone, as Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, had for the first time a full 
opportunity of displaying his genius in the man- 
agement of finance. He had to fight a stiff battle 
at Oxford. And although he was elected, he was 
elected by a majority seriously reduced. His first 
budget was introduced on April 18, 1853. The 



1/6 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

speech which he made in introducing his financial 
scheme will be remembered forever in the House 
of Commons. Certainly since the days of Pitt no 
financial exposition equal in point of eloquence had 
ever been heard in Parliament. Sir Robert Peel 
at his highest level was distinctly surpassed by his 
pupil. It seems hard to understand how a man 
could contrive to throw so much eloquence, fancy, 
illustration, and humor into a statement of facts 
and figures, but it is quite certain that Gladstone 
then, and in all his succeeding budget speeches, 
kept the House absolutely fascinated by the charm 
of his style, entirely apart from the substantial 
merits of the proposals he had to make. The 
clearness with which he explained all the details 
of his subject was the gift of genius in itself. The 
faculties of the listener were never kept upon the 
strain — and it may be said that there can be no 
really great speech which keeps the faculties of the 
listener on a perpetual strain. The gift of lucid 
explanation is like the gift of a fine voice. If we 
find it difficult to hear what an orator is saying, we 
soon, whether we like it or not, begin to be weary 
of his speech. In the same way, if we are dis- 
tressed by the difficult)^ of understanding the 
arrangements and comparisons of facts and figures 
which a Chancellor of the Exchequer is laying be- 
fore us, we must only wait in patience for next 



A COALITION GOVERNMENT 177 

morning's papers in order to find out what the 
plans of the financier really were. There was no 
difficulty in Mr. Gladstone's case. One might not 
agree with him, but no one could possibly pretend 
that he did not understand. The budget speech 
of 1853 lasted for five hours. I did not hear the 
speech myself, but I have spoken with numbers of 
men who told me that only a glance at the clock 
in the House of Commons could have convinced 
them that the orator had spoken for anything like 
such a length of time. Mr. George Russell gives, 
in a few lines, a very clear exposition of the princi- 
ples of Mr. Gladstone's first financial scheme. 

" It tended to make life easier and cheaper for 
large and numerous classes. It promised whole- 
sale remissions of taxation. It lessened the charges 
on common processes of business, on locomotion, 
on postal communication, and on several articles of 
general consumption. The deficiency thus created 
was to be met by the application of the legacy 
duty to real property, by an increase of the duty 
on spirits, and by the extension of the income tax 
at fivepence in the pound to all incomes between 
one hundred and one hundred and fifty pounds." 
" The speech," says Mr. Russell, " held the House 
spellbound. Here was an orator who could apply 
all the resources of a burnished rhetoric to the 
illustration of figures, who could make pippins 



1/8 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

and cheese interesting, and tea serious ; who could 
sweep the widest horizon of the financial future, 
and yet stop to bestow the minutest attention on 
the microcosm of penny stamps and post-horses." 
That was, indeed, the peculiar charm of Mr. 
Gladstone's financial expositions. One never could 
tell what curious illustration or quotation he 
might not bring in next ; by what odd fancy he 
might light up some subject in itself unattractive ; 
by what happy phrase he might fasten attention 
on some matter of merely commonplace interest. 
One could not miss a word ; one could not endure 
to wait for the next morning's papers. The voice, 
the intonation, the gestures, were in perfect keep- 
ing with the words. Every word was set off and 
made emphatic by the manner and the tone. 
The position of Mr. Gladstone was proclaimed 
certain by the first budget speech. It put him 
at the head of all the financiers of his day, and 
it set him up as a financial orator superior to 
Peel and at least equal to the younger Pitt. I 
believe that most of Gladstone's great financial 
expositions have been made without the help of 
anything more than the barest memoranda in 
figures. The orator was always ready to reply 
to any interruption, to give answer to any ques- 
tion, to travel away for a moment from the main 
track of his speech in order to remove difficulties 



A COALITION GOVERNMENT 



179 



and to solve doubts which it might be convenient 
to deal with at once, and then to turn back to 
the main line of his argument and go on as if 
no break in its tenor had ever been caused. In 
truth, Mr. Gladstone could do whatever he liked 
with language, as certain great musicians have 
been able to do whatever they like with notes. 
I am not now asking my readers to consider the 
actual effects of the financial scheme introduced 
by this brilliant and memorable speech. Monsieur 
Fould, the once famous minister of Napoleon the 
Third, said to his master on a certain important 
occasion: "Give me good foreign policy, and I 
will give you good finance." Mr. Gladstone might 
have said the same thing to his colleagues in the 
spring of 1853. He had given them good finance, 
and they marred it by a bad foreign policy. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE CRIMEAN WAR 

The first time I ever heard a speech from Mr. 
Gladstone was on the twelfth of October, 1853. 
It was on the occasion of the unveiling of a statue 
to Sir Robert Peel, erected in front of the Royal 
Infirmary in Manchester. On that occasion the 
freedom of the city was presented to Mr. Glad- 
stone^ and he delivered a speech in the Town 
Hall. That was a time when the Crimean War 
was impending but did not seem yet quite a 
certain fatality, and I well remember how intense 
was the interest with which everybody waited for 
any hint as to the possibility of peace that might 
be given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
The speeches made by Mr. Gladstone on that 
memorable day were worthy of the man whom 
it commemorated, and of the man who was his 
most illustrious follower. I shall never forget 
the impression made on me by Mr. Gladstone's 
eloquence, and made still more, I think, by the 
sincerity and the earnestness of the orator him- 
self. Commemoration speeches are apt to be 

180 



THE CRIMEAN WAR 



I«I 



triumphs of phrase-making and of rhetoric, and 
of nothing more. But in this instance the whole 
soul of the orator seemed to inspire the language 
of his speech. Mr. Gladstone appeared to be 
simply pouring out his heart and thought to a 
sympathetic audience. He spoke of Peel as he 
alone was qualified to speak of him ; but I think 
every one who listened to Mr. Gladstone that 
day felt convinced in his mind that a greater 
statesman and a greater orator than Peel had 
risen up to take the foremost place in the politi- 
cal life of England. As regards the Crimean 
War, it was plain enough that Mr. Gladstone was 
only hoping against hope. He still persisted in 
a lingering longing to look for the maintenance 
of peace, but nobody who heard him could have 
doubted for a moment that Mr. Gladstone's belief 
in the possibility of the maintenance of peace 
was a faith which seemed very like despair. 
Soon after, the country " drifted," to use a famous 
expression, into the war with Russia, and on 
March 27, 1854, the public announcement of the 
war was made. 

I am not now going back to the old story of 
the Crimean War. The country had been lashed 
into a passion for war, and there is no argument, 
for any European population at all events, when 
that passion for war lights up. The war had 



l82 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

been opposed in the most earnest and vigorous 
manner by men like Cobden and Bright. Some 
of Bright's speeches against the war poHcy are 
models of reason, of feeling, and of eloquence. 
But they only served to make Mr. Bright unpop- 
ular for the moment with the majority of his 
countrymen, and he was burnt in efifigy in several 
places as the friend of Russia. Everybody knew 
that Mr. Gladstone was, above all things, a votary 
of peace, of economy, and of everything which 
could add to the national prosperity. For him 
there was no glory about war. At a much later 
period of his career he declared that he did not 
understand what was meant by national prestige. 
He had to prepare a war budget, but even in 
the speech which introduced it he took care to 
express the profound dislike he felt to any war 
that was not actually inevitable. Much, no 
doubt, of the misery which the war entailed was 
due to the fact that many of those who, like Mr. 
Gladstone, were dragged into accepting it had 
no heart in the war policy and no sympathy 
with it. The Prime Minister of England himself, 
Lord Aberdeen, was anxious to the very last to 
keep out of the war. The trouble in all such 
cases is that patriotic Englishmen naturally shrink 
from abandoning the public service of their 
country at a time when the country is on the 



THE CRIMEAN WAR 



183 



eve of a great campaign. Lord Aberdeen and 
Mr. Gladstone remained, therefore, at their posts 
after the war broke out. 

There is not now, I beheve, a single respon- 
sible public man in England who does not utterly 
condemn the __ 
policy of that 
most unfort- 
unate war. To 
England it 
brought nothing 
but loss and mis- 
ery. There was 
no glory to be 
gained out of it, 
even if England 
had wanted 
glory of that 
kind. Never be- 
fore in all her 
warlike history had England been so poorly served 
by her commanders in the field. No Henry the 
Fifth was there, no Duke of Marlborough, no Duke 
of Wellington. The suffering inflicted on English- 
men was not the work of the enemy; it was the 
work of their own military administration. The 
mismanagement, the perverse blundering, the utter 
incapacity of those who looked after the army 




George H. Gordon, Fourth Earl of Aberdeen 

(From an engraving by Mr. D. J. Pound) 



l84 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

on the field, were absolutely without precedent. 
The whole commissariat and hospital organization 
utterly broke down. England, as Mr. George 
Russell very truly says, " lost some twenty-four 
thousand men, of whom five-sixths died from pre- 
ventable disease and the want of proper food, 
clothing, and shelter." With the help of the 
French and the Sardinians, the English army 
defeated the Russians time after time. Yet, when 
the whole war was over and done, only one great 
name came out of it, and that was the name of 
the Russian general, Todleben, who defended 
Sebastopol. If I were to mention in succession 
the names of the English commanders, very few 
of my readers now would know about whom I 
was talking. The war propped up for a short 
time the fabric of the French Second Empire. 
It made the fortune of the House of Piedmont. 
Count Cavour, not caring three straws about 
either Turkey or Russia, had seen his opportu- 
nity with the eye of genius and volunteered the 
alliance of Sardinia, and so obtained a right of 
representation at the Congress of Paris, where 
terms of peace were made, and thus laid the 
foundation of a United Italy under the House 
of Savoy. But for England the war did nothing 
whatever except to bring vast loss of treasure 
and vast sacrifice of gallant lives. No question 



THE CRIMEAN WAR 



185 



in which we were concerned was settled by 
that war. 

What is called the Eastern Question remains 
unsettled still, or rather, indeed, I should say 
that it is in a far worse condition now than it 
was before the Crimean War broke out. The 
Ottoman Gov- , 
ernment, for 
whose sake we 
spent so much 
money and so 
much blood, has 
lately proved it- 
self the most sav- 
age and tyranni- 
cal government 
known in civili- 
zation, and com- 
mits its Arme- 
nian massacres 
under our very 
eyes, metaphori- 
cally at least, and without the slightest regard 
to our expostulations. England fostered the 
Turkish Government to be an outrage upon 
civilization and a defiance to Enorland herself. 
"We were fighting," said Mr. Bright, "for a 
hopeless cause and a worthless ally." 




Camillo Benso, Count Di Cavour 

(Signer Brogi, of Florence) 



l86 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Meantime the condition of the Enghsh troops 
in the Crimea began to be a pubHc scandal and 
horror. Mr. Roebuck announced in the House 
of Commons his intention to move for the appoint- 
ment of a Select Committee to inquire into the 
state of our army before Sebastopol, and "into the 
conduct of those departments of the Government 
whose duty it has been to minister to the wants 
of that army." There was no serious possibility 
of resisting such a motion. Such was the con- 
viction of Lord John Russell, who instantly re- 
signed his place in the Cabinet. Mr. Gladstone 
did not see his way to resign in the face of the 
debate and division which were about to take 
place. He even defended to the best of his power 
the policy and conduct of the administration. The 
result of the division was a majority of 157 against 
the Government. The Ministry of Lord Aber- 
deen — the Coalition Ministry, as it was called — 
broke down as a natural result of this declaration 
of the majority of the House of Commons. 

The Queen sent for Lord Derby, who tried to 
form an administration, but could not succeed. He 
offered a place to Mr. Gladstone, but Mr. Glad- 
stone declined it. Two other eminent " Peelites," 
as they were called. Sir James Graham and Mr. 
Sidney Herbert, also refused to accept office under 
Lord Derby. All three gave as a reason that 



THE CRIMEAN WAR 1 87 

they had opposed the motion for a sort of ama- 
teur inquiry into the miUtary organization in the 
Crimea, and that they could not countenance it 
by becoming members of the Government. There 
was nothing for it but to make Lord Pahp^erston 
Prime Minister. The Peehtes were wilHna: to 
join him, but on the understood condition that 
the amateur inquiry was not to take place. Mr. 
Gladstone was offered the position of Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, and accepted the office. Lord 
Palmerston had once described himself very cor- 
rectly as, under the conditions, the " inevitable " 
Prime Minister. Mr. Gladstone was certainly the 
inevitable Chancellor of the Exchequer. "He is 
indispensable," said a keen observer at the time, 
" if only because any other Chancellor of the 
Exchequer would be torn into pieces by him." 
It has to be observed that this was the first time 
that Gladstone consented to take office under a 
Whig leader. This was, therefore, a distinct ad- 
vance on the way to Liberalism first, and to Radi- 
calism afterwards. Lord Palmerston, of course, 
was not much of a Liberal, and was nothing of 
a Radical. Still, he stood up as an opponent to 
Toryism, and professed to be a man of progress ; 
and therefore, when Gladstone joined his Cabinet, 
there was clear evidence that Gladstone had done 
forever with the " stern and unbending Tories," 



1 88 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

of whom, according to Macaulay, he was once 
the rising hope. He did not, however, serve for 
long under the new Government. As I have said, 
Lord Palmerston's administration was formed on 
the understanding that Mr. Roebuck's demand for 
a sort of amateur inquiry into the carrying on 
of the Crimean War was not to be granted. Lord 
Palmerston, however, soon saw that the country 
would not be satisfied without some form of in- 
quiry. The mind and heart of England were 
sick and sore because of the stories of military 
maladministration and easily avoidable disaster. 
Palmerston consented to the inquiry, and there- 
upon Mr. Gladstone, Sir James Graham, and Mr. 
Sidney Herbert resigned office. 
They had been members of Lord 
Palmerston's Cabinet about three 
weeks. Sir George Cornewall 
Lewis became Chancellor of the 
Exchequer in place of Mr. Glad- 
GEORGE CORNEWALL stonc. GladstoHC took his seat 
on one of the back benches, be- 
hind the bench on which the members of the 
Government have their places. I have many 
times seen him rise from that seat and heard 
him criticise the financial schemes of his succes- 
sor. His criticisms had, it is needless to say, life 
and vigor in them. He was master of every sub- 




THE CRIMEAN WAR 1 89 

ject which could be included in a budget. He 
knew all the details of every question. He could 
at any moment pour out a flood of criticism which 
dissolved the proposals of an opponent as a stream 
of corrosive acid might have done. 

I must say for myself that I always had a very 
high idea of the ability of Sir George Cornewall 
Lewis. He is a man who is almost wholly for- 
gotten in our time ; but I am convinced that he 
was one of the most thoroughly intellectual men 
of his day. I know that it may fairly be asked 
of me, " How could a man come to be forgotten 
if he had said or done anything worth remember- 
ing ? " All I can say is that I quite admit the 
fact that Sir George Lewis is personally forgotten, 
but I insist upon it that he seemed to me to have 
one of the greatest intellects of his time, and I 
know that some of his sayings, witty and sarcas- 
tic, humorous and profound, have passed into our 
common literature and our common talk, and are 
quoted every day by people who have some faint 
notion that they are citations from Dean Swift 
or Sydney Smith. Lewis had a miserably poor 
voice, and had no ideas about elocution, and the 
House of Commons hardly ever takes to a man 
whom it is difficult to understand or follow. In 
no case whatever could he have been an equal 
of Mr. Gladstone in financial argument, and he 



IQO THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

must have had a hard time of it very often while 
under the criticism of Mr. Gladstone. There 
was, I am sure, a great deal of the genuine phi- 
losopher about him, and I have little doubt that 
he said to himself now and again, " I am no 
match for Gladstone, and I know it. I have 
not the voice or the fluency or the eloquence. 
But thfere is one thing I can do ; I can thoroughly 
admire Gladstone, and admit his superiority." 

Gladstone, however, did not confine himself 
to criticisms merely of financial policy. He 
showed himself an independent critic on all sub- 
jects which aroused in him any question of prin- 
ciple. He made a great speech in the important 
debate on the manner in which the English 
authorities had behaved towards the Chinese in 
the once famous question of the lorcha Arrow. 
The Government was defeated on that question, 
and Parliament was dissolved. But Lord Pal- 
merston was quite safe. He had appealed to 
what may be called the Jingo feeling of the coun- 
try. He had denounced the Chinese Governor 
of Canton as " an insolent barbarian," and he 
came back into power with a strong majority. 

Mr. Gladstone was returned without opposition 
for the University of Oxford. He seemed to 
many observers somewhat depressed and dis- 
gusted by the condition of affairs, and by the 



THE CRIMEAN WAR 191 

triumph of Lord Palmerston over what appeared 
to Mr. Gladstone to be moral principle and na- 
tional honor. On June the third, 1857, we find it 
noted in Mr. Greville's journal that " Gladstone 
hardly ever goes near the House of Commons, 
and never opens his lips." He was destined, 
however, before long to open his lips to some 
purpose. The Divorce Bill was introduced by 
the Government, and there was no subject in 
human affairs on which Gladstone felt stronger 
convictions than the introduction of a measure 
to make divorce cheap and easy. 

It is quite certain that Gladstone never liked 
being under the leadership of Lord Palmerston. 
It is quite certain that he was glad just at this 
time to be released from such a leadership. The 
natures of the two men were totally unlike. One 
was earnest about everything; the other was ear- 
nest about nothing. But we may fairly assume 
that Gladstone, having so suddenly withdrawn 
from Lord Palmerston's administration, was not 
anxious, was indeed very unwilling, to start up 
in opposition to his late leader. The Divorce 
Bill was, however, too much for him, and he felt 
that he was bound to stand up and bear testi- 
mony against it. 

It was not likely, in any case, that such a man 
as Gladstone could remain long away from the 



192 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

House of Commons, or, being there, could hold 
his peace forever. At several periods in Mr. 
Gladstone's career there came a short season 
during which he seemed to have practically with- 
drawn from Parliamentary life ; during which he 
seldom came near the House of Commons, and 
never opened his lips there. Such a season never 
could have occurred in the career of a man like 
Lord Palmerston or Mr. Disraeli. Palmerston 
and Disraeli lived for the House of Commons 
and in the House of Commons. To attend its 
debates was a necessity to either man's existence. 
It was not so with Mr. Gladstone. He went to 
the House of Commons because it gave him an 
opportunity of advocating some great measure of 
national importance, or of opposing some scheme 
which he believed to be wrong. Each short se- 
cession came to an end the moment when Mr. 
Gladstone saw that there was work which he 
ought to do. In 1857 Mr. Gladstone found him- 
self drawn back to the House by his determina- 
tion to oppose the Divorce Bill which was brought 
in by Lord Palmerston's Government. He fought 
this bill through its every stage with characteris- 
tic and indomitable energy. He spoke incessantly 
in the debates on the measure, and he fought it 
with a spirit and with a mastery of detail which 
aroused the wonder even of those who knew him 




W. E. Gladstone in 1857 

(From the painting by Mr. George Frederick Watts, R.A.) 



THE CRIMEAN WAR 193 

best. He opposed the measure first of all upon 
the high ground of principle. He contended that 
marriage was not only or mainly an arrangement 
of the nature of a civil contract, like the hiring 
of a house or the setting up of a mercantile part- 
nership. He refused to admit for a moment the 
idea that marriage could be anything but a mys- 
tery of the Christian religion. He appealed to 
the law of God as to the inviolable sanctity of 
the marriage tie. That bond, he said, could not 
be severed in such a manner as to allow either 
of the parties to marry again. This was his first 
line of defence, and he sustained his position with 
splendid eloquence and perseverance. 

Now, the House of Commons is not an assem- 
bly which is easily to be influenced or impressed 
by considerations of so exalted a nature. It is 
usually and for the most part a prosaic, man-of- 
the-world, half-cynical sort of assembly which is 
inclined to take human beings pretty much as 
they are commonly found in clubs and drawing- 
rooms and on race-courses, and is rather impa- 
tient of any appeal to what may be called the 
higher law. Yet it cannot be doubted that the 
magnificence of Mr. Gladstone's eloquence en- 
thralled the House for the time, although it could 
not in the end carry the division. The most 
light-minded members of the House listened in 



194 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

breathless admiration to those noble appeals to 
the higher law for which nobody so well as he 
could have obtained a hearing. Every one must 
admit that, whether he was practically right or 
wrong, he took in his argument the loftiest posi- 
tion that statesmanship or morality could occupy. 
He fought his battle not only in the House of 
Commons, but also in the public press. Mr. 
Gladstone has always at every great crisis of his 
career championed his cause in the journals and 
the reviews as well as on the public platform and 
in the House of Commons. He put his prin- 
ciples very clearly and emphatically in an article 
which appeared in the " Quarterly Review," in 
which he says : " Our Lord has emphatically told 
us that, at and from the beginning, marriage was 
perpetual, and was on both sides single." From 
these opinions Mr. Gladstone has never since 
receded in the least. He has changed his views 
on many subjects, but on this question his opin- 
ions have undergone no change. When he had 
fought the bill on its main principle, and then 
endeavored to have it postponed for fuller public 
examination and discussion, and had been beaten 
on both those issues, he next applied himself to 
amend the bill in its passage through committee. 
As every one knows, the actual principle of a 
bill is determined on its second reading in the 



THE CRIMEAN WAR 



195 



House of Commons. That principle is then taken 
to be established, and thereupon the bill goes into 
committee to be amended or modified or made 
worse in its details. Mr. Gladstone applied him- 
self to an unceasing effort for the elimination 
from the bill of what seemed to him its worst and 
most offensive purposes. He pointed out, for 
instance, that there was a fundamental injustice 
in that part of the bill which would entitle the 
husband to obtain a divorce from an unfaithful 
wife because of a single act of infidelity, but 
which did not give the same right to the wife 
against the husband, and did not entitle her to 
obtain a divorce unless the husband had been 
physically cruel as well as morally unfaithful. 

The debates in committee were conducted on 
the part of the Government by the Attorney-Gen- 
eral, Sir Richard Bethell, afterwards Lord West- 
bury, one of the keenest and ablest lawyers ever 
known in the House of Commons. Sir Richard 
Bethell was master of every statute and every 
clause which could have any bearing on the sub- 
ject, and he had an unfailing resource of acrid and 
even vitriolic sarcasm. It might well have been 
thought by many people that even Mr. Gladstone, 
with all his eloquence, would be no match for such 
an antagonist on that antagonist's own ground. 
But Mr. Gladstone never in his whole life showed a 



196 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



more marvellous fighting power than he put forward 
in this long controversy. To every reply he had 
his rejoinder ; to every citation of authority he had 
another citation at the tip of his tongue. His 

wonderful gift 
of memory came 
into surprising 
play. He could 
repeat whole 
passages from 
a statute without 
a scrap of a note 
to assist him. 
One miafht have 
thought, to hear 
him, that he had 
given up his en- 
tire life to the 
study of the mar- 
riage laws of 
various ages and 
nations, and had 
never allowed 
his attention to be distracted from the subject by 
finance or politics or the reading of Homer. He 
did succeed in obtaining some slight improvements 
in the measure, but the bill in its main provisions 
was passed in spite of all his resistance. Old mem- 




RlCHARD BETHELL, BARON WESTBURY 
(From a photograph by Maull & Fox) 



THE CRIMEAN WAR 



197 



bers of the House of Commons will tell you to 
this day of the effect produced by those splendid 
passages of arms. Bethell, they all say, was great, 
but Gladstone was greater, and it was Bethell's own 
ground and not Gladstone's. The bill was passed 
into law, and Mr. Gladstone has never ceased to 
condemn it. Something, of course, has to be said 
for the bill if we consent to come down from that 
lofty religious principle which Mr. Gladstone main- 
tained, and which some of the great churches of the 
world have always maintained. It has to be said 
that divorce existed in England long before the 
passing of the Act Mr. Gladstone opposed, but it 
was divorce obtained after a very different fashion. 
A divorce could be obtained, first of all, by proving 
the offence in a court of law, and then by passing a 
bill through both Houses of Parliament to give 
effect to the judgment of the court of law by the 
dissolution of the marriage. This was an im- 
mensely costly process, and it made divorce the 
luxury of the very rich. Mr. Gladstone did not 
find his conscience or his mind attracted by the 
prospect of facility or cheapness. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE IONIAN ISLANDS 

I VENTURE to think that Mr. Gladstone never 
undertook a more congenial task than that which 
was offered to him by the Tory Government, 
which had turned out Lord Palmerston, when 
the Homeric scholar was invited to go out to the 
Ionian Islands for the purpose of conducting an 
inquiry on the spot as to the complaints and griev- 
ances of the islanders. The proposal was made 
under the inspiration of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, 
the novelist and dramatist, who had become Secre- 
tary for the Colonies in the Tory Government. 
Bulwer Lytton's career in Parliament had up to 
this time been little better than an absolute failure. 
He had been in the House of Commons from 1831 
to 1 84 1, and his attempts at Parhamentary debate 
had ended in almost absolute breakdown. But he 
was a man of indomitable perseverance, and he 
seems to have said to himself that he would not die 
until he had made a name as a Parliamentary ora- 
tor. A debater he never could have been, because 
he was so deaf that he had to read a speech in the 



THE IONIAN ISLANDS 199 

newspapers before he could attempt to reply to it. 
His articulation was, from actual physical causes, 
so defective that almost any other man would have 
considered himself utterly debarred from any at- 
tempt at eloquence. But Sir Edward Bulwer 
Lytton had a boundless confidence in himself — I 
should have called it a boundless self-conceit, if he 
had not made good his pretensions so far as popu- 
larity was concerned. One may smile at the ex- 
travagance of the style displayed in several of his 
novels, but it is impossible to deny that the novels 
had an immense popularity. He wrote a play, and 
was told by the critics that he had no dramatic gift. 
He accepted the fact that the play was a failure, 
but he said that he could do better, and he wrote 
the " Lady of Lyons," which, with all its preposter- 
ous faults, had for more than a generation a vast 
success, and even still holds the stage. Inspired by 
these successes, he seems to have made up his 
mind that he would conquer the House of Com- 
mons also. He did in the end conquer the House 
of Commons, after a fashion, very much as he had 
conquered the literary and the dramatic public. 
Even in the full popularity of Dickens and Thack- 
eray he held his own with the literary public ; even 
in the days of Gladstone and Bright and Disraeh 
he accomplished a marvellous success in the House 
of Commons. He was a master of the art of gor- 



200 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

geous phrase-making, elaborate no doubt, but very 
splendid. Whenever it was known that he was 
about to speak in a debate, the House was crowded. 
I am really unable to explain the secret of his 
success, but the success itself was at the time a 
fact which it would be impossible to doubt. His 
speeches are well-nigh forgotten now in the House 
of Commons, and nobody any longer believes that 
he was a great orator. Some of us did not believe 
it even then; and even while we were under the 
influence of the spell we felt pretty clear that it 
was but a glamour and a magic destined to lose its 
effect. Still, we could not deny that Bulwer Lytton 
had conquered the House of Commons and held it 
for the time enthralled. Then he turned on to 
prove himself a practical statesman. He founded, 
for example, the Colony of British Columbia. But 
the mission of Mr. Gladstone to the Ionian Islands 
was something more in keeping with Bulwer 
Lytton's general tastes and tendencies. The seven 
Ionian Islands were united as a kind of common- 
wealth by the Settlements of 1815, and they were 
placed under the protection of England, which had 
the right of maintaining garrisons in them. Eng- 
land was represented by a Lord High Commis- 
sioner, who was usually a soldier, and who was 
Commander-in-Chief as well as civil Governor. 
The Republic of the Seven Islands had a Senate 



THE IONIAN ISLANDS 201 

and a Legislative Assembly. For many years 
there had been growing complaints in the islands 
against English administration. The complaints 
admitted, in fact, of no real compromise. What the 
islanders wanted above all things was to be Greeks 
and to be united with the Kingdom of Greece. It 
was futile to point out to them that their material 
affairs were much better administered under the 
English Government than they were likely to be 
under the Government of King Otho, the dull, in- 
capable ruler of the Greek Kingdom. It was of no 
use to tell the islanders that they had much better 
roads and harbors and lines of steamers than were 
possessed by the inhabitants of the Greek King- 
dom. Their whole ideas of life were not limited 
to roads and piers and bridges and harbors. They 
had an impassioned, romantic, indomitable desire 
to be united with their brothers of the Kingdom. 
Futile, unreasonable critics in this country tried to 
convince them that the islanders, after all, were not 
of kin with the Greeks of the mainland. It was 
argued that the inhabitants of the mainland had 
got so intermixed with other races that they could 
hardly be considered genuine Greeks at all. The 
islanders could not be reasoned out of their national 
sentiments by any inquiries into the pedigree or 
the family tree of the Grecian Kingdom. So there 
was always some trouble in the Ionian Islands, and 



202 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



the Lord High Commissioner every now and then 
dismissed some more or less mutinous ParHament 
and convened another by a general election, and 
the new Parliament was in spirit just the same 

as the old, and 
things went on 
exactly as they 
had been going 
before. 

Bulwer Lytton 
was, it would 
seem, the first 
statesman in of- 
fice to whom it 
occurred to ask 
himself whether, 
after all, there 
might not be 
something worth 




Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, 
Baron Lytton 



considering 



m 



the claims made by the people of the seven islands. 
" Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton," says a modern writer, 
" had not been long enough in office to become 
soaked in the ideas of routine. He did not regard 
the unanimous opinions of the insular legislature, 
municipalities, and press as evidence merely of 
the unutterable stupidity or the incurable ingrati- 
tude and wickedness of the Ionian populations." 



THE IONIAN ISLANDS 



203 



Therefore it occurred to him that it might be 
as well to send out some impartial statesman 
who could examine the controversy on the spot; 
and he could think of no one so well fitted for 
such a task as Mr. Gladstone. Every one knew 
that Mr. Gladstone was in strong sympathy with 
the general movement of Greece to accomplish 
a high destiny in Europe, and the mere fact 
that such a man was sent out would be enouo-h 
in itself to prove to the islanders that no prede- 
termined spirit of hostility was dictating the mis- 
sion. The news of the offer was at first received 
in English society with incredulity, and then with 
a good deal of ridicule. Is it possible, wise and 
solemn people asked, that Mr. Gladstone could 
be induced to accept so crazy a mission ? Mr. 
Gladstone, however, did not think the mission 
altogether crazy, and he at once accepted it. 

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton had made in his 
despatch an eloquent allusion to Mr. Gladstone's 
Homeric studies, and dry officials insisted that 
this was nothing short of an unwarrantable out- 
rage on all the precedents of conventional diplo- 
macy. "What are we coming to?" they asked. 
" We have a Prime Minister, Lord Derby, who 
goes in for Greek studies ; we have a novelist as 
leader of the Government in the House of Com- 
mons; we have a novelist as Colonial Secretary;- 



204 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

and these three propose to send out a man on a 
mission to the disturbed Ionian Islands for no 
other reason than because he is fond of reading 
Homer!" 

Mr. Gladstone, however, was in hope that he 
could do some good by accepting the mission, and 
he went out to the Ionian Islands, arriving at Corfu 
in November, 1858. Up to that time I believe 
he never had been in Greece. It must have been 
to him like the actual realization of youth's best 
dream when he stood on the soil of Greece, when 
he went from island to island of that enchanting 
Greece for which nature and poetry and history 
and tradition have done so much, when he saw 
the home of Ulysses and the fabled rock of 
Sappho, and, above all, when he climbed the 
Acropolis of Athens and gazed upon the Parthe- 
non, and, turning his eyes one way, looked on 
Mount Hymettus, and turning another way saw 
Salamis, and then, on a clear day, the outlines of 
the steep of Acro-Corinth. 

Even the most commonplace among us who 
have in our early days been at all in love with 
Greek poetry and Greek history, were it through 
the blurring medium of translations and "cribs," 
have felt as we reached that enchanted soil rather 
as if we were coming home to some familiar 
scenes of our boyhood than as if we were enter- 



THE IONIAN ISLANDS 205 

ing for the first time into a foreign country. If 
that is so with the commonplace among us, how 
must it have been with a man hke Mr, Gladstone, 
steeped to the lips in all the poetry, the history, 
and the traditions of Greece, and with an oppor- 
tunity given to him now of visiting Greece, not 
merely as a tourist, however loving and devoted, 
but as a man intrusted with a mission to listen 
to the complaints of the Greek islanders and to 
endeavor to find some remedy for any genuine 
grievances of which they complained. 

Mr. Gladstone, it is needless to say, went to 
the task he had undertaken for the British Govern- 
ment with the most genuine and exact loyalty. On 
December the third, 1858, he called together the 
Senate of the Septinsular Commonwealth at Corfu, 
and he explained to them the task which he 
had set out to acconiDlish if he could. At Corfu, 
and during all his public addresses in the Greek 
islands and the mainland, he spoke in Italian, 
which is the commanding foreign language once 
you leave Trieste on the way to the Levant. 
Mr. Gladstone did not attempt to speak in mod- 
ern Greek. He could read modern Greek with 
perfect fluency, and has been heard to complain 
that he found some difficulty only when Greeks 
would write to him in a very bad hand and in 
" cursive Greek." But the hopeless incompatibil- 



2o6 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

ity between the pronunciation of Greek taught 
at Oxford and the Greek spoken in Corfu or in 
Athens would have rendered it impossible for 
him to make himself effectively understood if he 
attempted to address in Greek a modern Greek 
audience. Every one who has been in Greece, 
and who knows anything at all of classic Greek, 
must have found that, while it is easy enough 
to make out the meaning of a leading article in 
an Athenian newspaper, it is hardly possible to 
make one's self understood by or to understand 
the courteous Greek to whom one puts a ques- 
tion in the streets. 

The effect of Mr. Gladstone's speeches in Italian 
was something superb and electrifying. He told 
the Senate of the Ionian Islands at Corfu that 
the liberties guaranteed to the islanders by the 
treaties of Paris and by the Ionian law were 
absolutely sacred in the eyes of the Queen of 
England. But, he said, on the other hand, "the 
purpose for which the Queen has sent me here 
is not to inquire into the British Protectorate, 
but to examine into what way Great Britain may 
most honorably and amply discharge the obliga- 
tions which, for purposes European and Ionian 
rather than British, she has contracted." Then 
he made an official visit to all the islands, receiv- 
ing deputations and delivering replies. He under- 




W. E. Gladstone 

(From a photograph by Samuel A. Walker) 



THE IONIAN ISLANDS 207 

took that a full inquiry should be made into 
every complaint or grievance, and that a thorough 
system of constitutional government should be es- 
tablished in the islands. As I have said, however, 
the lonians had one uncompromising grievance — 
the grievance that they were kept from a thorough 
union with the Kingdom of Greece, 

The Legislative Assembly of the Seven Islands 
voted unanimously an address to the Queen, 
praying that they might annex themselves to 
the Greeks of the mainland, Mr. Gladstone's 
visit was, in fact, a totally unsuccessful scheme 
for those who fondly desired that the Protectorate 
of England should be everlasting, and that the 
islanders should be brought to submit themselves 
to it and reconcile themselves with it. It may be 
taken for granted that Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton 
was not one of those who believed in the possi- 
bility of prevailing on the Greek' islands to hold 
themselves aloof from the Greek Kingdom. No 
doubt, when he selected a man like Mr. Glad- 
stone for the mission to the Ionian Islands, he 
foresaw well enough that the occasion would be 
availed of by the islanders to make such a demon- 
stration as would convince the dullest Philistine 
in Westminster Palace that the hearts of the 
Greek islanders were unconquerably set on a 
union with the Kingdom of Greece. The people 



208 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

of the islands received Gladstone with all the 
enthusiasm and devotion which they believed due 
to one who was at heart in favor of their national 
aspirations. They cheered him, and crowded 
round him, and cried " Zeto " for him, not as the 
Lord High Commissioner Extraordinary of an 
English Tory Government, but simply as Glad- 
stone the Philhellene. His tour through the 
islands and in the mainland was simply a trium- 
phal progress. His path was strewed with flowers. 
Up to the last he maintained his assurances 
that the only object he was commissioned to 
attempt to accomplish was to make the Protecto- 
rate of England acceptable to the Ionian Islands, 
and not to release the islanders from the Protec- 
torate which had been imposed on England as well 
as on the islands by the united counsels of the 
Great Powers of Europe. The islanders listened 
and applauded, but all the same they insisted on 
regarding Mr. Gladstone's mission as the foreshad- 
owing of their national aspirations, of their union 
with their countrymen in the Kingdom of Greece. 
So indeed it proved to be before very long. The 
one material and practical result of Mr. Gladstone's 
mission to the Ionian Islands was to make it 
clear to even the dullest among us here at home 
that there was no way of satisfying the Ionian 
Islanders but by allowing them to unite them- 



THE IONIAN ISLANDS 



209 



selves with Greece. We could easily, of course, 
crush them by superior strength, but until we 
had extinguished the life of the last Greek 
islander we could not extinguish the just and 
natural passion for union with parent Greece. 
Mr. Gladstone, of course, got a great deal of 
abuse from the Tory press in England, and was 
accused of having stimulated and fomented the 
desire of the islanders for a release from the 
British Protectorate. The most hasty perusal of 
Mr. Gladstone's speeches must have shown that 
he was most cautious not to do anything of the 
kind. In no way whatever did he exceed the 
strict terms of his mission to the islands, but in 
any case some of the London newspapers wrote 
as if the Ionian Islands had been bound from all 
time to a grateful devotion to England. They 
wrote as if Eno;land had called the islands into 
being, and as if any wish to get free from Eng- 
lish control were as ingrate and graceless an 
act as the conduct of Regan and Goneril, the 
daughters of King Lear. 

There was an attempt made for a while to main- 
tain the Protectorate, but events soon settled the 
question. The opportunity came a few years after. 
The Greeks of the Kingdom got sick of the stupid 
rule of their dull and heavy sovereign. King Otho. 
They simply bundled him out of Athens, bag and 



2IO 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 




baggage. Then came the question what to do 
next. The Greeks themselves had probably had 
quite enough to do with kings for their time, 
although they had had only one sovereign. But 

the Great Pow- 
ers of Europe, 
and perhaps 
more especially 
England, pressed 
upon them that 
they had really 
better have a 
king, for the mere 
look of the thing. 
There was at 
that time no re- 
public in Europe 
but the Republic 
of Switzerland, 
and Greece did 
not feel strong- 
enough to hold 
out against the pressure. The Greeks invited Prince 
Alfred of England, afterwards Duke of Edinburgh, 
and still more lately Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 
and in fact they elected and proclaimed him King. 
But there was a clear understanding in European 
statesmanship that no prince of any of the great 



George I. (Georgios I.) King of Greece 

(Unknown photo.) 



THE IONIAN ISLANDS 211 

reigning families should be appointed as a sover- 
eign over Greece. It was not in the least degree 
probable that an English prince would have ac- 
cepted or would have been allowed to accept any 
such responsible and precarious position. 

The Government of the Emperor Napoleon III. 
promptly managed to put in a practical objection 
to the proposal by delicately pointing out that if 
any of the Great Powers were to be allowed to 
appoint one of its princes to the throne of Greece, 
France had a prince of her own Imperial house 
quite disengaged, who might have a claim at least 
as good as another. The allusion was, of course, 
to the " unemployed Caesar," as Monsieur Edmond 
About described him, the late Prince Napoleon, 
the Emperor's cousin, a man of extraordinary intel- 
lect, culture, and capacity, a statesman and a brill- 
iant orator, by far the most gifted of the Napoleon 
family since that family's great founder, but who 
with all his gifts came to nothing in the end. 

The sovereign and government of England 
would not in any case have allowed Prince Alfred 
to accept the crown of Greece, even if the Prince 
himself had had the slightest ambition that way. 
But in any case the significant remark of the 
French Government would have settled the ques- 
tion. " Punch " worked a capital comic cartoon out 
of the offer made to the sailor lad Prince Alfred. 



212 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Then some one started the suggestion that a prince 
of the House of Denmark should be made King of 
the Greeks, and the suggestion was accepted. The 
House of Denmark, it is hardly necessary to say, 
is brought by marriage bonds into close relation- 
ship with the royal family of England. The 
Prince of Wales is married to a Princess of the 
House of Denmark, The second son of the King 
of Denmark was offered the crown of Greece, and 
accepted it and became King — not of Greece; 
the Greeks, like the French of later monarchical 
times, were very particular about the title — but 
King of the Hellenes. Meanwhile the English 
Government had undergone a change, and Lord 
John Russell had come into office as Foreign Sec- 
retary under Lord Palmerston as Prime Minister 
and with Mr, Gladstone as Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer. The occasion seemed propitious to the 
new Government to allow the Ionian Islanders to 
carry out their long-cherished wish. Lord John 
Russell obtained the consent of the great continen- 
tal powers to the handing over of the islands to the 
Kingdom of Greece and its new sovereign. A 
great deal of anger was expressed, of course, in 
some of the Tory newspapers, and Lord John 
Russell's action was denounced as though he had 
hauled down the flag of England from one of the 
Empire's most ancient and cherished possessions 



THE IONIAN ISLANDS 



213 




Earl Russell (Lord John Russell) 



in cowardly deference to the demand of some great 
foreign power. As I have ah'eady pointed out, 
England had never conquered the Ionian Islands, 
had never annexed them, had never set up any 
claim whatever to their ownership, and had merely 



214 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

accepted, out of motives of public policy, the un- 
comfortable and troublesome charge which had 
been imposed upon her by the other great States 
of Europe. Some years passed between Mr. Glad- 
stone's visit and the cession of the Ionian Islands 
to the Greek Kingdom, but the one event was the 
direct consequence of the other. But for Mr. Glad- 
stone's visit the Liberal Government and the Eng- 
lish people generally would never have known how 
resolute, how passionate, how unconquerable, was the 
desire of the Ionian Islanders to be in union with 
the people of the Kingdom of Greece. The object- 
lesson which, as I remarked before, is always needed 
in political affairs was supplied by the reports and 
descriptions of Mr. Gladstone's progress through the 
seven islands. Not one Englishman in fifty thou- 
sand cared before that visit three straws about the 
condition or the feelings of the Ionian Islands. The 
ordinary Englishman hardly knew who the islanders 
were, or where they lived, or what was the matter 
with them. He saw now and then in his daily 
paper some brief announcement that the Lord High 
Commissioner had dissolved another Parliament 
at Corfu. The announcement did not affect him 
with any manner of interest. Very likely he did 
not know where Corfu was, and in case he did, 
would not have cared. But the condition of things 
became very different when one of the foremost 



THE IONIAN ISLANDS 21 5 

English statesmen, perhaps the most picturesque 
-statesman of his time, was sent out to inquire into 
the alleged grievances of the Ionian Islanders, and 
when the papers every day began to contain long 
descriptions of his movements and full reports of 
all the addresses delivered to him and all the replies 
which he returned. Then the minds of many men 
woke up at once to the reality of the state of 
things, and to the fact that there was in the far-off 
Levant a race of men over whom Eno-land had no 

O 

right of conquest or rulership whatever, whom she 
was simply taking charge of to oblige the other 
great European powers, and who were filled with a 
passion to be united politically with their kindred 
in Greece. By the time that the Greek revolution 
had been accomplished, the English public was 
quite prepared for the proposal of Lord John 
Russell. With a large number of that public the 
mere sentimental consideration that the brother of 
the Princess of Wales was to be the new King of 
the Hellenes settled the matter altogether. The 
vast majority, therefore, of the English people 
entirely approved the withdrawal of the British 
Protectorate, and the annexation of the islands to 
the Greek Kingdom. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE REPEAL OF THE TAXES ON EDUCATION 

Mr. Gladstone soon came into power again as 
Chancellor of the Exchequer. This was in i860, 
a time indeed of storm and stress for the whole 
civilized world, Louis Napoleon had completed 
his campaign in Lombardy, and every one saw 
that the Lombardy campaign was only the begin- 
ning of new disturbances in Italy. The peace of 
Villafranca had been patched up by the Emperor 
because he thought that he had got all he wanted 
for his prestige. Italian officers broke their sword- 
blades across the marble tables of cafes in Milan 
when they heard that Victor Emanuel and Count 
Cavour had consented to the terms of peace. 
England had a new war in China put upon her. 
From the United States came the first words 
that told the world of a great civil war about to 
break out. John Brown had made his momen-. 
tons raid into Harper's Ferry for the purpose of 
running off negro slaves, and he had been tried, 
convicted, and executed, and his soul, as the pop- 
ular ballad truly said, was " marching on." Abra- 

216 



THE REPEAL OF THE TAXES ON EDUCATION 217 

ham Lincoln had been chosen by the National 
Repubhcan Convention at Chicago as candidate 
for the Presidency of the United States, and we 
on this side of the Atlantic were beginning to 
understand what that meant. England was har- 
assed just then by the outbreak of a number of 
strikes, illustrating in action the immemorial con- 
flict between capital and labor. There was some- 
thing approaching to a panic among the English 
people with regard to the attitude of Louis Napo- 
leon. We had gone very cordially and cheeringly 
with him into the Crimean War, but now it sud- 
denly came to the minds of people that we had 
better make up our minds to prepare for what 
Mr. Disraeli sarcastically called " a midnight foray 
from our imperial ally." " True," said Tennyson 
in a poem, " that we have a faithful ally, but only 
the devil knows what he means." Let an English 
statesman look where he would, he saw but storm- 
clouds and portents of alarm. 

It was at just that moment that Mr. Glad- 
stone as Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to 
have made up his mind to go in for the broad, 
bold course of financial reform, of the lightening 
of taxation as far as possible everywhere, and 
especially of the diminution or the complete re- 
moval of the odious taxes on popular education. 
One of Mr. Gladstone's first achievements was 



2l! 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



the establishment of a Commercial Treaty between 
England and France, by virtue of which the 
lighter French wines were to be admitted with 
a small duty into England for popular consump- 
tion, and English manufactured goods were to 

be admitted into 
France at a cor- 
responding dimi- 
nution of impost. 
The idea of such 
a commercial 
treaty belonged 
in the first in- 
stance to Mr. 
Bright, but was 
put into shape 
by Mr. Cobden. 
Mr. Gladstone 
gave it his warm 
and practical 
support, and Lord Palmerston had no particular ob- 
jection ; did not care very much either way. Mr. 
Cobden went over to Paris backed up by all the influ- 
ence Mr. Gladstone could give to him, and entered 
into negotiations with the Emperor Napoleon the 
Third. The Emperor was naturally very willing 
to be on friendly terms with England, although 
if it had been necessary for the support of his 




Richard Cobden 

(From an old engraving) 



THE REPEAL OF THE TAXES ON EDUCATION 219 

dynasty to make war against England he would 
have done so without scruple. So he readily 
entered into terms with Mr. Cobden. Cobden 
had the powerful support of Monsieur Michel 
Chevalier, a famous political economist of that 
time, and also of the Emperors cousin. Prince 
Napoleon, whom Cobden afterwards described 
to me as on the whole the best-informed man 
he had ever met. The Commercial Treaty was 
passed ; we got light clarets to drink instead of 
fiery ports and ardent sherries ; and the French 
people got all sorts of comfortable garments of 
English manufacture. 

Mr. Gladstone was denounced a great deal for 
the part he had taken in adopting Cobden's policy 
as to the Treaty of Commerce. He was some- 
times talked of in the House of Commons as if 
he had given the French invading armies a safe 
landing-place on the shores of England. He took 
all these attacks with a sort of amused good humor. 
One thing was certain : he always gave back in 
ridicule a great deal more than he got in denun- 
ciation. The declaimer who had the courage to 
attack him in Parliament was soon, to use a very 
colloquial expression, sorry he spoke. That was 
a splendid session of Parliament for Mr. Gladstone 
and his policy. He and Bright fought the battle 
all to themselves. Mr. Cobden was for the greater 



220 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

part of the time still in Paris ; nor, although a most 
persuasive and convincing speaker, could he pos- 
sibly be compared as a Parliamentary orator with 
Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Bright. Disraeli led the 
opposition, but he neither knew nor cared much 
about the whole subject, and in any case his posi- 
tion was naturally very trying when he had to 
reply to Bright and be replied to by Gladstone, 
It is not pleasant to be set between two such 
millstones. The grinding process is apt to be 
severe. 

Still more important for Mr. Gladstone's career 
and for the development of education in Great 
Britain and Ireland was his measure for the aboli- 
tion of the duty on paper. One has to go back 
a little in order to explain what this duty on 
paper really was. The duty on paper has been 
described as the last remnant of an ancient sys- 
tem of finance which tended to the severe repres- 
sion of popular journalism. First of all there was 
a stamp duty, which was imposed with the avowed 
object of preventing the growth of seditious news- 
papers — that is to say, of newspapers advocating 
any manner of popular reform. In the early part 
of the century the stamp duty amounted to four- 
pence on every single copy of a newspaper issued. 
Later on it was reduced, and in 1836 it was 
brought down to a tax of a penny, represented 



THE REPEAL OF THE TAXES ON EDUCATION 221 

by the red stamp of the Government on every 
copy. Then there was a tax of sixpence on every 
advertisement in the newspaper. The editor of a 
great London morning journal has told me that 
he can well remember the time when a Govern- 
ment ofTficial came down to the office of the paper 
somewhere after midnight every day before the 
paper had gone to press, insisted on seeing an 
early copy, and then proceeded to mark with pen- 
cil what he considered to be advertisements. Of 
coarse, about the regular trading announcements 
there could be no manner of doubt. When Messrs. 
Brown proclaimed that they had a lot of new silk 
dresses from Paris to dispose of, or Messrs. Jones 
informed the gratified public that they had im- 
ported a stock of the finest wines from Bordeaux 
or Burgundy at the cheapest prices, there could 
be no sort of a question as to the genuineness 
of the advertisement. One might say that there 
ought to be no tax upon advertisements at all, 
but, admitting the existence of such a tax, and the 
right of Parliament to impose it, there could be 
no question as to the application in these par- 
ticular instances. My friend the editor assured 
me, however, that the Government officials were 
most arbitrary in their definition as to what con- 
stituted an advertisement and was therefore liable 
to the tax. A harmless line appeared in the 



222 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

corner of the paper announcing that Mr. Robin- 
son, M.P., was about to address his constituents 
in the ensuing week. That is an advertise- 
ment, the Government official declared. No, it is 
only a piece of news, the editor pleaded. " News 
me no news," the official replied, and he marked 
it down with a sixpenny tax. The latest of all 
these imposts was the heavy duty on the paper 
material itself. This was really an enormous im- 
position ; and let it be clearly understood that 
the distinct purpose of that and all other imposts 
was to make it difficult for anybody but a capitalist 
of great means to produce a newspaper at all. No 
journal could come into existence until it had sat- 
isfied the authorities that it was able to provide the 
amount of capital necessary to meet all this enor- 
mous taxation. As I have said already, the distinct 
and avowed object of the taxation was to prevent 
the issue of cheap newspapers. At this time the 
first organized movement for the publication of 
cheap newspapers was beginning to be made in 
England. The city of Liverpool, the place of Mr. 
Gladstone's birth, led the effort by starting the 
first penny daily paper ever published in Great 
Britain. Lancashire, Mr. Gladstone's county, was 
then and always since has been in the front of 
every great movement of social reform. London 
soon took up the scheme of cheap daily news- 



THE REPEAL OF THE TAXES ON EDUCATION 223 

papers. The " Daily Telegraph " and the " Morn- 
ing Star " were started as penny daily papers. The 
" Daily Telegraph " is at this hour probably the 
most prosperous and popular daily paper in Great 
Britain. But the effect of the duty on the paper 
material was still an almost crushing obstruction 
to cheap journalism. It soon became evident that 
with this heavy imposition it was almost impos- 
sible that a penny daily paper could pay its way. 
There had for some time been an important agi- 
tation going on for the abolition of all repressive 
taxation on popular education. Charles Dickens 
took a leading part in the movement, and had 
even gone so far as to come into conflict with 
the legal authorities of the country because he 
persisted in publishing a weekly journal which 
contained actual news as well as literature. Mr. 
Gladstone saw that the time had come for giving 
life and strength to the new ideas. He became 
impressed with the fact that there was no way 
more efficacious of spreading popular education 
than by the multiplying of cheap newspapers 
which brought the daily story of the world home 
to the huts and the garrets of the poor. Up to 
that time it was quite common for a number of 
persons to club together and subscribe for a daily 
paper, which they read by turns. The usual 
understanding was that the subscriber who got 



224 '^HE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

the paper last should be entitled to keep it in 
his possession. At that time, as an English writer 
has observed, it was the creed of many that cheap 
newspapers meant the establishment of a daily 
propaganda of socialism, communism, red repub- 
licanism, blasphemy, bad spelling, and general 
immorality. 

Mr. Gladstone took quite the other view of the 
question. He had full faith in the intelligence of 
his countrymen and of the English-speaking peo- 
ples in general to keep the cheapest newspaper 
press within the limits of common sense and de- 
cency. He had no faith whatever in the good 
working of a restrictive money-fine to keep down 
enterprise in the issue of cheap newspapers. The 
newspaper was, according to his belief, one of the 
most powerful influences towards the spread of 
national education, and he soon made up his mind 
to abolish the last tax which stood in its way. 

In his financial scheme of i860 he announced 
that the Government had resolved to abolish the 
duty on paper. It is hardly necessary to say that 
such a proposition met with the strongest opposi- 
tion from both sides of the House. It became a 
mere question of what we call vested interests. 
There were many influential manufacturers of 
paper in the House of Commons, and these all 
joined in an organized opposition to any scheme 




W. E. Gladstone 
(From a photograph by Vincent Brooks Day & Son) 



THE REPEAL OF THE TAXES ON EDUCATIOiN 225 

which threw open the business of newspaper pub- 
Hshing to free and common competition. Natu- 
rally, the well-established and high-priced journals 
objected to the idea of a penny " rag " being en- 
abled to compete with a sixpenny daily journal. 
Therefore the battle was fiercely fought out in 
the House of Commons and in the daily press, 
and Mr. Gladstone became, naturally, the object 
of much fierce denunciation. According to many 
of his critics, the result of his policy could only 
be the overthrow of the altar and the throne, the 
aristocratic system and the whole moral creed, of 
the nation. The vested interests in the House 
of Commons were then, as they are even still, very 
strong, and one vested interest was generally found 
ready to stand by another. In the early part of 
the session Mr. Gladstone was very unwell, and 
his financial statement had to be put off for some 
days. When he did come to make his statement, 
the force of his marvellous eloquence and reason- 
ing power compelled the House of Commons to 
pass the provision for the abolition of the paper 
duty. But at each stage of the measure the 
majorities in favor of the abolition fell and fell. 
The second reading was carried by a majority of 
fifty-three ; the third reading was carried by a 
majority of only nine. This naturally gave new 
courao-e to the House of Lords, and in the Heredi- 

O 

Q 



226 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

tary Chamber a motion was made and carried by 
a large majority to reject altogether Mr. Glad- 
stone's bill for the repeal of the duty on paper. 
This action on the part of the House of Lords 
broiiQ-ht on a constitutional crisis as serious as 
any that has happened in our time. The House 
of Lords, it should be understood, has no power 
to impose taxation on the people of England. But 
if the House of Lords has no power to initiate 
taxation on the people, it was fairly and justly 
contended by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright that 
neither can the House of Lords have any right to 
reimpose on the English people any tax which the 
House of Commons has seen fit to take off. This 
is, indeed, the evident common sense of the matter. 
If the House of Lords could have the constitu- 
tional right to reimpose a tax which had been 
taken off by the Representative Chamber — that 
is, the taxing Chamber — there could be no reason 
whatever why the House of Lords should not 
have the right to initiate taxation of its own free 
will. Nobody even among the Tory leaders of 
the House of Lords ventured to contend that the 
Hereditary Chamber had any right to initiate taxa- 
tion, but it was plausibly argued that when a cer- 
tain scheme of taxation came before the peers, the 
peers had a perfect right to modify the scheme in 
any way that they thought fit. 



THE REPEAL OF THE TAXES ON EDUCATION 22/ 

The question then came down to a very nar- 
row issue. The repeal of the paper duty was put 
off for one session ; but the pubHc out-of-doors, 
having full faith in the leadership of Mr. Glad- 
stone, were not much excited by what Mr. Glad- 
stone well called the " gigantic innovation '*' on 
the part of the Hereditary Chamber. There were 
meetings held, to be sure, all over the country, 
and the action of the House of Lords was strongly 
and justly denounced. But the general feeling 
was one of perfect conviction that Mr. Gladstone 
would put the whole thing right, and therefore 
there was no popular disturbance whatever. I 
remember the time well. I w^as even then in 
the thick of political life, and I can say with 
certainty that only the strong faith in Mr. Glad- 
stone's capacity as a leader prevented something 
not unlike a national convulsion. The Liberals 
had little faith in Lord Palmerston. Lord Pal- 
merston's sympathies went a good deal with the 
Tories and against the Radicals. Mr. Gladstone 
absolutely condemned the conduct of the House 
of Lords. Lord Palmerston only proposed a series 
of mild resolutions reafBrminor the riorhts of the 
House of Commons with regard to national taxa- 
tion. Then for the first time it became clear to 
all the world that Mr. Gladstone was bidding his 
final farewell not merely to the Tory party but 



228 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

to the party of the Whigs — that is to say, the 
lagging and backward section of the Liberals. 
His final declaration on the subject was yet to 
come, but it may already be anticipated by some 
consideration of the conditions under which the 
House of Lords was still stimulated into setting 
up its will against that of the House of Commons. 
I have said that the majorities in favor of 
Mr. Gladstone's measure dwindled at each stage, 
and at last came down to a poor superiority of 
nine. The fact is that at that time the House 
of Commons was only constitutionally and techni- 
cally representative of the majority of the people. 
The franchise was so high and so limited that it 
excluded the whole mass of the working classes. 
There was not at that time a sino^le man in the 
House of Commons who represented, or was en- 
titled to speak for, the laboring population of 
the three kingdoms. The great Reform Bill in- 
troduced by Lord Grey and Lord John Russell 
thirty years before, and carried after a two years' 
struggle, had admitted what men called the middle 
classes of England to the right of voting for the 
election of a member to the House of Commons. 
But the working classes and the poor had been 
wholly left out of the measure. It remained for 
men like Lord John Russell and Mr. Gladstone 
and Mr. Bright to initiate later on the movement 



THE REPEAL OF THE TAXES ON EDUCATION 229 

which admitted the workingmen and the poor to 
a share in the representation of the country. 

Therefore the House of Commons, to which Mr. 
Gladstone submitted his scheme for the aboHtion 
of the duty on paper, took but a languid interest 
in the matter when the instantaneous spell of 
his eloquence was over. Most of the members, 
or nearly all of them, could very well afford to 
pay sixpence for their daily paper, and they were 
not responsible for their votes to any of the class 
who most especially wanted cheap newspapers. 
The peers, therefore, naturally took courage. 
They felt little doubt that the majority of the 
House of Commons would be rather obliged to 
them than otherwise for the course they had 
taken in resisting Mr. Gladstone's reforni. But 
the country kept quiet, as I have said, because 
it had full faith in Mr. Gladstone's determination, 
and because it was quite certain that the peers 
would not resist him for very long. 

As a matter of fact, Mr. Gladstone's scheme was 
passed into law in the very next session. The 
peers did not attempt any further resistance. If 
anything could have proved more clearly than 
another the utter worthlessness of the existence 
of the House of Lords, it would have been proved 
by its action with regard to the paper duties. For 
the House of Lords said in one session that to 



230 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



make paper cheap would be to flood the country 
with abominable newspapers, spreading everywhere 
the doctrines of anarchy and profligacy, and in 
the very next session it said in effect, " Well, if 
Mr. Gladstone and the House of Commons want 
this iniquitous measure, of course they must have 
it. If they really want to ruin the country, we 
must only let them ruin the country, and make 
no further work about it." A story went at the 
time that Lord Palmerston sent up a message to 
the House of Lords to give them advice as to 
their conduct with regard to the repeal of the 
duties on paper. I do not venture to vouch for 
the truth of the story, but, if it was not true, I 
think, at least, it ought to have been true. Lord 
Palmerston, it was said, sent up a message to the 
House of Lords to say that the rejection of Mr. 
Gladstone's scheme was a very good joke for 
once, but they really must not try it another time. 
The peers would seem to have acted promptly 
upon this suggestion. They did not try the joke 
another time. The duty on paper was repealed, 
and the three kingdoms got their cheap news- 
papers in abundance. It is almost needless to 
say that not one of the penny papers that started 
into existence all over this country advocated 
any doctrine of anarchy or profligacy or disorder. 
Better-conducted papers do not exist in any coun- 



THE REPEAL OF THE TAXES ON EDUCATION 231 

try in the world than the cheap journals which 
Mr. Gladstone by his policy helped into existence. 
With one single exception, there are only penny 
and half-penny daily papers in Great Britain and 
Ireland now. There is not one of these cheap 
papers that is not far superior in its array of news 
and in the style of its writing to any of those high- 
priced journals existing thirty years ago because 
of the legislation which Mr. Gladstone abolished. 

No other man could have done the work so 
well as he did. Cobden could not have done it, 
Bright could not have accomplished it. For 
neither of these men was in office, and neither 
had the command of the House of Commons 
which was possessed by Mr. Gladstone. Like- 
wise, it has to be said that neither of them could 
have had the same influence over Lord Palmer- 
ston which Mr. Gladstone was enabled to exert. 
Palmerston did not really care three straws about 
the repeal of the taxes upon education, or, indeed, 
about any other popular reform. But then his 
heart was not set so much the other way as to 
induce him to enter into a struggle for power 
with Mr. Gladstone. Palmerston knew perfectly 
well that Gladstone was the coming man, and 
that if he were to set himself in opposition to 
Mr. Gladstone, or make any serious attempt at 
restraint of Mr. Gladstone, the national will of 



232- THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

the country would put the younger man in the 
more commanding place. There is a story of a 
philosopher who said of himself that he would 
just as soon be dead as alive. Being asked why, 
then, he did not kill himself, he made the very 
reasonable and consistent answer that he would 
just as soon be alive as dead. Lord Palmerston's 
views as to popular reform were of much the same 
nature. He would just as soon have no popular 
reform as any. But if pressed upon the subject, 
he soon found out that he would just as soon 
have any popular reform as none whatever. 

Such a man had no chance against the ever-grow- 
ing energy and earnestness of Mr. Gladstone. His 
very style of speaking in the House, easy and col- 
loquial, humorous, full of shrewd hits, and occa- 
sionally enlivened by a somewhat cheap cynicism, 
was in curious contrast with the impassioned and 
majestic flow of Mr. Gladstone's convinced and 
convicting eloquence. The two men never really 
came into antagonism at all. But they represented 
two distinct influences, and had Lord Palmerston 
been a younger man it is quite likely that the 
influences might have come into collision at one 
time or another. Lord Palmerston's chief inter- 
est was in foreign affairs, and there, curiously 
enough, his policy was rather revolutionary in 
its tendency. Mr. Gladstone was almost always 



THE REPEAL OF THE TAXES ON EDUCATION 233 

in sympathy with every foreign cause that repre- 
sented freedom and advancement, but his dearest 
interests were with the happiness and with the 
improvement of the people of his own two islands. 
So far as home affairs were concerned, Lord Palmer- 
ston's great idea was to put off any sort of trouble, 
to let things slide, to keep away as long as possible 
any effort at reforming things which perhaps after 
all could do just as well without reform, and, gen- 
erally speaking, not to make any bother, Mr. 
Gladstone's whole soul was with political and 
social reform. He saw with the eye of genius 
and of philanthropy that these countries were 
oppressed by what must be called class legisla- 
tion, and his whole soul was aflame to give help 
to those who could not help themselves. Lord 
Palmers ton, though he lived to a good old age, 
did not live long enough to come to any serious 
extent in the way of Mr. Gladstone's progress. 
Indeed, about the time of Gladstone's scheme for 
the abolition of the paper duties it became a com- 
mon saying among the followers of Mr. Cobden 
and Mr. Bright that Radicals must wait quietly 
until Palmerston's disappearance, and that then 
Gladstone would come to the front and would do 
the work which the country wanted. Up to this 
time Mr. Gladstone had not spoken out distinctly 
on the great question of the Parliamentary fran- 



234 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

chise. But people already saw that that would 
be his next work of reform, and that he was des- 
tined to be the leader of the people in England. 
From the days when Macaulay had described him 
as the hope of the stern and unbending Tories, 
what a distance he had already traversed ! He 
was now the great hope of the Radical advocates 
of reform and progress. Cobden and Bright 
now began to call him the leader of the English 
democracy. 

In his early college days Mr. Gladstone devel- 
oped a strong passion for riding. I do not know 
whether he ever cared to ride to hounds or not ; 
but he certainly loved riding for its own sake, 
quite apart from the fascination of hunting ; and 
he became a rider of marvellous skill and courage. 

Often have I seen him, in my younger days, 
galloping over the fields around Chester — close to 
the Welsh frontier, within which stands Hawarden 
Castle. The famous American horse-tamer, Rarey, 
when he was in England, spoke of Mr. Gladstone 
as one of the finest and boldest riders he had ever 
seen — and Rarey was a man who, on such subjects, 
quite knew what he was talking about. Years after, 
when Mr. Gladstone was Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer, he was taking his usual ride in the park 
— Hyde Park — on a very spirited and even wild 
young horse. The horse plunged and ran away — 



THE REPEAL OF THE TAXES ON EDUCATION 235 

got off the ordinary track of riders and came 
along a spread of turf divided by rails and gate- 
ways. The horse made for one of the little gate- 
ways — of light and slender iron — and went straight 
over it. Mr. Gladstone was apparently quite deter- 
mined to have the better of that horse. The mo- 
ment the horse had leaped the gate the rider turned 
him round and put him at the gate again. Again 
he topped it, and again his master turned him 
and made him go at it once more, and surmount 
it yet another time. So it went on until the 
horse was fairly but very harmlessly conquered, 
and the rider was the supreme victor of the day. 
It is hardly necessary for me to say that this 
little incident was watched by many curious eyes, 
and that it found its way into the papers. I 
happened to be in London at the time, and was 
deeply interested. I saw auguries in it, and I do 
not think my prophetic inspirations were alto- 
gether disappointed by the result. It would take 
a very reckless horse or a very reckless political 
opponent to get the better of Mr. Gladstone. He 
has made his party face many a stiff fence since 
the far-off days of that little event in Hyde Park. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

I HAVE already mentioned the fact that the 
great Civil War in America had broken out. 
The war created a curious difference of opinion 
in this country. What is commonly called 
" society " was almost altogether in favor of the 
South. The English democracy and working 
classes generally were entirely in favor of the 
North. Some of our educated men were divided 
in opinion. Carlyle, who perhaps could hardly 
be called, on that question, an educated man, was 
rabidly in favor of the South, or, rather, was 
rabidly opposed to the North. He knew nothing 
whatever about the matter, and used to boast 
that he never read American newspapers. On 
the other hand, John Stuart Mill, probably the 
most purely intellectual Englishman of his time, 
was heart and soul with the cause of the North. 
Cobden and Bright were, of course, leaders of 
public opinion on the side of the North. Harriet 
Martineau, probably the cleverest woman who 
ever wrote for an English newspaper, advocated 

236 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 



237 



the cause of the North day after day. Lord 
Palmerston, in his heedless, unthinking way, had 




John Stuart Mill 

(From a photograph by the London Stereoscopic Co.) 

talked some jocularities after the battle of Bull 
Run which were offensive to the minds of all 
Americans who supported the cause of the North. 
Lord Palmerston, however, although Prime Min- 



238 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

ister, was always regarded as an irresponsible sort 
of person, who could not be expected to refrain 
from his joke, no matter whom the joke might 
offend. But a profound sensation was created in 
the Northern States when Mr. Gladstone unluckily 
committed himself to a sort of declaration in favor 
of the South. Speaking at a public meeting at 
Newcastle-on-Tyne on the seventh of October, 1862, 
he gave it as his conviction that Jefferson Davis 
" had made an army, had made a navy, and, more 
than that, had made a nation." This declaration 
was received in America with feelings of the 
most profound disappointment. It produced 
something like consternation among the English 
Radicals who were proud to follow Mr. Glad- 
stone. The pity of it was that he should have 
spoken on the subject at all before he had made 
himself thoroughly acquainted with it. The pity 
of it was that he should have taken no account 
of the opinions of men like Cobden, who knew 
the American States well, like Bright, and like 
Stuart Mill. However, we must take Mr. Glad- 
stone as Nature made him, impetuous, earnest, 
full of emotion, and quick of speech. " If I were 
always cool in council," says Schiller's hero, " I 
should not be William Tell." If Gladstone were 
always cool in council he would not be the great 
orator, philanthropist, and reformer that we know 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 



239 



him to be. Five years later on Mr. Gladstone 
made a frank and ample admission of his mis- 
take. " I must confess," he said, " that I was 
wrong ; that I took too much upon myself in 
expressing such an opinion. Yet the motive was 
not bad. My sympathies were then — where they 
had long before been, where they are now — with 
the whole American people. I, probably, like 
many Europeans, did not understand the nature 
and the working of the American Union. I had 
imbibed conscientiously, if erroneously, an opinion 
that twenty or twenty-four millions of the North 
would be happier, and would be stronger — of 
course, assuming that they would hold together 
— without the South than with it, and also that 
the negroes would be much nearer to emancipa- 
tion under a Southern government than under the 
old system of the Union, which had not at that 
date been abandoned, and which always appeared 
to me to place the whole power of the North at 
the command of the slaveholdino- interests of the 

O 

South. As far as regards the special or separate 
interest of England in the matter, I, differing 
from many others, had always contended that it 
was best for our interest that the Union should 
be kept entire." It is only fair to remember that 
many of the strongest abolitionists of the North 
had for years been growing into the conviction 



240 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



that if the South did not secede from the North, 
the North would have to secede from the South. 
It was perfectly true, as Mr. Gladstone said, that 
the whole power of the North had been for a 
lona: time at the command of the slaveholdins^ 
people of the South. The election of Abraham 
Lincoln to the Presidency was the first signal 
that that time had gone by. 

Mr. Gladstone's attention, however, was closely 
occupied by domestic affairs and by his work as 
Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had not trav- 
elled in America as had Cobden and Harriet Mar- 
tineau, nor had he, like Stuart Mill, the leisure to 
make himself master of the study of American 
politics and life. Anyhow, the mistake was amply 
atoned for. It was a mistake which hurt the 
best admirers of Mr. Gladstone in England even 
more than it hurt his best admirers in the North- 
ern States of America, and it was fully atoned 
for by more than one admission of error and 
expression of regret. Nobody could have doubted 
for a moment that Mr. Gladstone's wishes thor- 
oughly went for the prosperity and the progress 
of the great American Republic. 

In 1865 the Parliament which had begun six 
years before came to its natural end. Mr. Glad- 
stone presented himself again as a candidate to 
the electors of Oxford University. Times had 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 241 

changed, however, since his latest election. He 
was becoming more and more an advanced re- 
former. He had expressed himself in the House 
of Commons to the effect that the present posi- 
tion of the State Church in Ireland was unsatis- 
factory. The Irish Church, as he frankly admitted, 
ministered only to one-eighth or one-ninth of the 
whole Irish population. This speech created a 
profound sensation among his Oxford constituents. 
To many of the University dons it seemed like 
flat blasphemy. When the voting closed, Mr. 
Gladstone was at the bottom of the poll. He 
issued a parting address in which he said : " After 
an arduous connection of eighteen years, I bid 
you respectfully farewell. My earnest purpose to 
serve you, my many faults and shortcomings, the 
incidents of the political relation between the Uni- 
versity and myself, established in 1847, so often 
questioned in vain, and now at length finally dis- 
solved, I leave to the judgment of the future. It . 
is one imperative duty, and one alone, which in- 
duces me to trouble you with these few parting 
words — the duty of expressing my profound and 
lasting gratitude for indulgence as generous, and 
for support as warm and enthusiastic in itself, 
and as honorable from the character and distinc- 
tions of those who have given it, as has, in my 
belief, ever been accorded by any constituency to 



142 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



any representative." To the Bishop of Oxford, 
who wrote him a most sympathetic letter, Glad- 
stone sent a reply in which occurs the following 
passage : " Do not join with others in praising 

me because I 
am not angry, 
only sorry, and 
that deeply. 
For my revenge, 
which I do not 
desire, but 
would baffle if 
I could, all lies 
in that little 
word 'future' 
in my address, 
which I wrote 
with a con- 
sciousness that 
it is deeply 
charo-ed with 

o 

meaning, and 
that that which shall come will come. There have 
been two great deaths or transmigrations of spirit 
in my political existence — one very slow, the break- 
ing of ties with my original party; and the other 
very short and sharp, the breaking of the tie with 
Oxford. There will probably be a third, and no 




Samuel Wilberforce, 1805-1873 



TPIE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 



243 



more." This expression of Mr. Gladstone's aroused 
some alarm in the mind of the Bishop of Oxford. 
He asked for some explanation of its meaning. 
"You are not a Radical," the Bishop wrote, "and 
yet you may, by political exigencies, if you submit to 
be second, be led into heading a Radical party until 
its fully developed aims assault all that you most 
value in our country, and it, the Radical party, 
turns upon you and rends you." Mr. Gladstone's 
rejoinder, full as it is of gratitude and sympathy, 
was not likely to have quite cleared up the doubts 
of the Bishop of Oxford. Mr. Gladstone was not, 
however, left actually out in the cold by the deci- 
sion of the Oxford electors. Some of his friends 
in South Lancashire had provided against such 
a possibility by nominating him as a candidate for 
that northern constituency. At a general election 
a man may be nominated for several constitu- 
encies, and, if he be elected for more than one, 
he has only to choose which place he will sit for. 
Mr. Gladstone was elected for South Lancashire, 
but he came last on the list of the three repre- 
sentatives. The two others were strong local Tories 
— obscure men, comparatively. 

Lord Palmerston had said, or was believed to 
have said, to a friend, that Gladstone was a dan- 
gerous man, and had best be kept in Oxford. " In 
Oxford," went on Lord Palmerston's phrase, " he is 



244 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

muzzled, but send him elsewhere he will run wild." 
In one of the spirited speeches which Gladstone 
made to the electors of South Lancashire he re- 
ferred good-humoredly to Palmerston's remark. 

" At last, my friends," he said, " I am come 
among you ; and I am come, to use an expres- 
sion which has become very famous and is not 
likely to be forgotten, I am come unmuzzled." 
The general elections gave to the Government 
a slight majority, and Mr. Gladstone resumed his 
old office as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Every- 
body thoroughly understood the difference between 
his position as member for South Lancashire and 
member for Oxford University. We shall pres- 
ently find that South Lancashire Toryism be- 
came too strong for him, and that he had to 
seek for a more liberal and progressive constitu- 
ency. The Bishop of Oxford saw probably by this 
time that his fears about the possibility of Glad- 
stone drifting on into genuine Radicalism were by 
no means unlikely to be justified. More than 
once after his election for South Lancashire he 
had to go on for new constituencies — for con- 
stituents who were marching with the movement 
of his mind. 

In truth, Mr. Gladstone's mere acceptance of 
office under Lord Palmerston marked a new stage 
in his political career. He had definitively broken 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 245 

away from the Tory party. While he still re- 
mained an independent member, he had given, 
up to the last, some votes now and then in sup- 
port of the Tory Government where he believed 
that they were acting on a rightful principle. But 
even then he had voted with them only when it 
seemed to him that their action, however inspired, 
was tending towards a policy of Liberal reform. 
Now it was becoming every day more and more 
plain that Mr. Gladstone was growing out of the 
dusk of Toryism into the dawn of Liberalism. 
When he consented to take office under Lord 
Palmerston, it was proclaimed to every one that 
he had given up the last of his old traditions. 
Lord Palmerston, to be sure, was not much of a 
Liberal ; he was not, indeed, much of anything 
except a Prime Minister and a very clever leader 
of the House of Commons. But Mr. Gladstone 
simply accepted Lord Palmerston as everybody 
else did. He regarded him as the man inevita- 
ble for the moment, the man who could, when 
occasion required, put on a decent show of lead- 
ing the Liberals, and at the same time could to 
a certain extent propitiate and even manage the 
Tories. Mr. Gladstone's sympathies were very 
cordially given to Lord John Russell, now For- 
eign Secretary, who was a sincere and a thorough 
Liberal reformer. Lord John Russell and Mr. 



246 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Gladstone worked together most cordially. They 
were both strongly in favor of some measure of 
reform which should admit the mass of the people 
to the franchise. They both strongly disliked 
Lord Palmerston's bumptious and aggressive tone 
in foreign politics. They both disliked Lord Pal- 
merston's plans for a vast expenditure on fortifi- 
cations and on what Mr. Disraeli called " bloated 
armaments " as a protection against possible or 
problematical invasion. Lord Palmerston, it is 
well known, was never drawn towards Mr. Glad- 
stone, and was sometimes heedlessly outspoken in 
his disparagement of his great colleague. 



CHAPTER XX 

GLADSTONE SUPPORTS POPULAR SUFFRAGE 

Mr. Gladstone at last declared himself a con- 
vinced and definite supporter of the popular suf- 
frage. The declaration came about in a sudden and 
unexpected sort of way. Wednesday in the House 
of Commons is one of the days which is considered 
to be the property of the private members until 
that period of the session comes when the Govern- 
ment, whatever it may be, having muddled away 
the time at its disposal, finds itself compelled by 
the necessities of the case to absorb all the sittings 
of the House. On Wednesday, the eleventh of 
April, 1864, a bill was brought in by a private mem- 
ber for the extension of the franchise in boroughs. 
On such occasions it is usual for members of the 
Government to keep quiet and take no conspicuous 
part either way. Some Minister usually rises and 
utters a few careful and commonplace words, com- 
mitting the Government to nothing in particular. 

On this occasion Mr. Gladstone struck into the 
debate, and even with vehemence. He contended 
that the burden of proof rested, not upon those 

247 



248 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

who claimed for the working classes the right to 
the franchise, but on those who denied that right. 
" We are told," Mr. Gladstone said, " that the work- 
ing classes do not agitate for the suffrage, but is it 
well that we should wait until they do agitate ? In 
my opinion, agitation by the working classes upon 
any political subject whatever ought not to be 
made a condition previous to any Parliamentary 
movement, but, on the contrary, is to be deprecated, 
and, if possible, prevented by wise and provident 
measures." " An agitation by the working classes," 
he pointed out, " is not like an agitation by the 
classes above them having leisure. The agitation 
of the classes having leisure is easily conducted. 
Every hour of their time has not a money value ; 
their wives and children are not dependent on the 
application of those hours of labor. But when a 
workinsfman finds himself in such a condition that 
he must abandon that daily labor on which he is 
strictly dependent for his daily bread, it is only be- 
cause then, in railway language, the danger-signal 
is turned on, and because he feels a strong neces- 
sity for action, and a distrust in the rulers who have 
driven him to that necessity. The present state of 
things, I rejoice to say, does not indicate that dis- 
trust ; but, if we admit that, we must not allege the 
absence of agitation on the part of the working 
classes as a reason why the Parliament of England 



GLADSTONE SUPPORTS POPULAR SUFFRAGE 249 

and the public mind of England should be indis- 
posed to entertain the discussion of this question." 
In the course of his speech Mr. Gladstone asked 
whether the working classes "are not our own flesh 
and blood ? " This speech naturally created a 
great sensation. Some of Mr. Gladstone's own 
colleagues seemed to be nearly frightened out of 
their lives. The Conservative newspapers wrote of 
it as if it were a modern reproduction of Rousseau's 
doctrine of the social contract. The measure 
which Mr. Gladstone advocated was not carried at 
that time, and nobody had the least expectation 
that it was likely to be carried. But everybody 
knew perfectly well that the lowering of the suf- 
frage to admit the working classes had become a 
matter of certainty when once that speech had 
been spoken. 

Then at last it was plain to every one that Mr. 
Gladstone had absolutely broken away from all the 
traditions of his early Parliamentary career. He 
had put himself at the head of the free-trade move- 
ment. He had put himself at the head of the 
movement for the repeal of taxes upon knowledge. 
Now he was putting himself at the head of the 
movement for the extension of the right of voting 
so as to admit the working classes and the poor 
generally to the exercise of a vote as to the per- 
sons whom they considered best fitted to represent 



250 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

them. From that moment it was merely a question 
of time, of sessions, when the principle of popular 
representation should be carried into law and into 
practice. 

Two years later the Government of which Mr. 
Gladstone was the leader in the House of Com- 
mons brought in a bill to extend the franchise so 
far as to make what I may call the better condi- 
tioned of the working classes free to exercise a 
vote at an election. One great difHculty had been 
removed out of the way of any movement for the 
extension of the suffraQ-e. Lord Palmerston was 
dead. Every one knew that so long as Palmerston 
lived he would be sure to throw cold water on any 
proposal to give a vote to the working classes. 
His influence in the negative sense was immense, 
and it was thoroughly understood, as I have said, 
by men like John Bright, that no good measure 
of suffrage reform had a real chance in the House 
of Commons while Palmerston was still leader of 
the Government. But now Palmerston was gone. 
That strange career which had fostered every 
revolution abroad and discouraged every genuine 
reform at home had come to an end. It would 
not be easy to get readers at this day to under- 
stand what an influence was exercised over the 
House of Commons, and over the English public 
generally, by the easy-going, careless, contemptu- 



GLADSTONE SUPPORTS POPULAR SUFFRAGE 



251 



ous ways of Lord Palmerston, He was able to 
infuse a sort of natural cynicism into the well-to-do 
classes of English life which made them think it 
ridiculous to take serious trouble about any ques- 
tions of political reform. He represented exactly 
the mind of the sort of man who, in domestic 




Henry J. Temple, Viscount Palmerston 

(From an old woodcut) 

affairs at least, cared nothing about anybody. 
When domestic politics went against Lord Pal- 
merston, he made some great outburst in foreign 
affairs, and then the man in the streets threw up 
his hat for him and shrieked aloud that Palmer- 
ston was the one who could make the foreign 
tyrants shake in their shoes. It is not likely that 



252 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

there will ever again arise in English politics a 
man of the type of Lord Palmerston. He was not 
a Tory ; he laughed at Toryism and its old-fash- 
ioned prejudices ; but he did not care one straw 
for any really liberal measure. The enthusiasm of 
Gladstone was unintelligible to him. He could 
not understand why a man like Gladstone should 
concern himself in the least about the question 
whether the working classes ought or ought not 
to have any share in the suffrage. He was a 
genial, kindly hearted man, who would have liked 
people to be as happy as possible, but it was not 
in his nature to think that people were any the 
happier for having votes. He went through the 
world gay and careless so far as domestic affairs 
were concerned, and only stirred to enthusiasm 
when some foreign question arose, on which he 
was much more likely to be wrong than right. 
As I have said, there was a sort of truce to the 
question of suffrage reform while Palmerston lived. 
Now that he was out of the field, Earl Russell and 
Mr. Gladstone resolved to bring in a bill for the 
extension and the expansion of the suffrage. It 
was not really a very sweeping measure of reform. 
Looking back now at its introduction, one can 
only wonder how so tentative and limited a meas- 
ure could have been expected to satisfy the de- 
mands of the English democracy. One has to 



GLADSTONE SUPPORTS POPULAR SUFFRAGE 253 

ask in amazement what would have been thought 
of such a measure in Canada or in the Austrahan 
colonies. Still, it was a distinct advance for the 
time, and it had the qualified approval and the full 
practical support of John Bright, who now, since 
the death of Richard Cobden, was left the great 
leader of the popular reform movement in Eng- 
land. The measure, although made as moderate 
and as limited as even timorous reformers could 
have desired, did not pass through the House of 
Commons. Then, as much more lately, Mr. Glad- 
stone found himself confronted by a formidable 
secession from the ranks of his own party. A 
number of Liberals declared against his Reform 
Bill and supported the Tories in their opposition 
to it. The opposition was a phenomenon which 
occurs again and again in the history of an Eng- 
lish Liberal Ministry. Some of the followers of 
the Ministry are always sure to think that the 
leaders are going too far in the way toward demo- 
cratic institutions, and they lose heart or turn 
back, or even join the opponents of all Liberalism. 
This happened in 1832, when Lord Grey and 
Lord John Russell brought in their Reform Bill. 
It happened when Lord John Russell brought in his 
Reform Bill in i860. It happened in 1866, when 
Lord Russell as Prime Minister in the House of 
Lords, and Mr. Gladstone as leader of the House 



254 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

of Commons, brought in their Reform Bill ; and 
it was to happen again, as we shall see, when, 
twenty years later, Mr. Gladstone brought in his 
measure of Home Rule for Ireland. In 1866 the 
Reform Bill was not Liberal enough to arouse any 
great passion of enthusiasm in the country, and 
yet it was too liberal for the faint-hearted members 
of the Radical party. It would be needless now 
to go into any details of the measure or any criti- 
cism of them, and, indeed, details of that great 
controversy have rather a personal than a political 
interest. Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Dis- 
raeli were seen at their very best in that memo- 
rable fight, but, of course, every one knew that 
these men would do their best in such a strife. 
The honors of the debate were really carried off 
by Mr. Robert Lowe, who died years after in 
obscurity as Lord Sherbrooke. Robert Lowe had 
won distinction in New South Wales, where he 
had become a prominent politician. He came 
over to settle in London, and, being a man of 
great literary gifts, he obtained a position as leader- 
writer for the " Times." He found a seat in the 
House of Commons, and was commonly regarded as 
a man likely to make a name in Parliamentary de- 
bate. For a long time, however, he gave no dis- 
tinct proof of any capacity that way. His opportu- 
nity came with Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill of 1866. 



GLADSTONE SUPPORTS POPULAR SUFFRAGE 255 

Lowe had somehow acquired the more narrow- 
minded Hterary man's hatred of all popular reform. 
With him culture ranked as the first and foremost 
of everything. The idea of a man being allowed 
to vote at an election who could not read Greek 
and Latin was revolting to his soul. He was not 
really a great Greek and Latin scholar. He did 
not know Greek nearly as well as Gladstone did or 
as John Stuart Mill did; but he prided himself 
more on his classical knowledge than was the way 
of Gladstone or Stuart Mill. 

He had a contempt, which he did not even pre- 
tend to conceal, for the working classes and the 
poor generally. Therefore he threw his whole soul 
into an impassioned opposition to Gladstone's mild 
and moderate measure of reform. He had a mar- 
vellous literary gift of phrase-making, of paradox, of 
sarcasm, and of illustration. He had read much in 
many literatures ; he had apparently a wonderful 
memory, and whenever an idea occurred to him 
some quotation floated with it, double — swan and 
shadow. He was certainly the comet of a season ; 
he dazzled and startled the whole House of Com- 
mons. I heard almost all those great debates, and 
I remember them well. I know that Gladstone 
was at his best, that Bright was at his best, that 
Disraeli was at his best, but I cannot help acknow- 
ledeino; that the chief interest was absorbed by Mr. 



256 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Lowe. Many things were against him. He had 
a very bad voice and a wretched articulation ; his 
sight was miserably short, and if he had any notes 
he found it almost impossible to read them ; he had 
to compete with three men whose voices and articu- 
lation were magnificent ; and yet he held his own. 
I was greatly interested in the whole struggle, and 
in the part which Mr, Lowe took in it. I came to 
know him very well later on, and found him, as 
many people said they did not find him, a genial 
and agreeable companion. But his success in 
those reform debates of 1866 and 1867 was a won- 
der and a puzzle to me. I could not dispute the 
success, but it astonished me quite as much as did 
the success of Sir Bulwer Lytton in the former 
days which I have described. I could not question 
the wonderful freshness of Lowe's phrase-making, 
and the aptness of his illustrations. Still, I could 
not understand, and I cannot understand now, how 
he came to carry off the honors of debate from 
Gladstone, from Disraeli, and from Bright. The 
one thing certain to my mind is that he did it. 
It will not settle the question to say that the 
House of Commons was apathetic about reform, and 
was only too glad to hear somebody put the argu- 
ments against reform in sparkling and brilliant sen- 
tences. All that was done as well as it needed to be 
done by Mr. Disraeli until the following year, when 



GLADSTONE SUPPORTS POPULAR SUFFRAGE 257 

he became a reforming statesman himself. Yet not 
even Mr. Disraeh aroused the enthusiasm of the 
Tories themselves nearly so much as Mr. Lowe did 
during the season of which he blazed the comet. 
The Reform Bill broke down under two influences 
— the influence of those who were opposed to all 
reform, and the influence of those who complained 
that by that bill they were not getting reform 
enough. The measure had to be given up, and 
Earl Russell and Mr. Gladstone resigned ofhce. 
Mr. Gladstone, in his closing speech on the bill, 
rose to a height of eloquence which he had never 
exceeded before and has not surpassed since. Mr. 
Disraeli had been unwise enough to remind Mr. 
Gladstone, in the course of the debate, that he, 
Gladstone, had spoken against the Reform Bill of 
1832 in the Oxford Union Debating Society. Mr. 
Disraeli, it should be brought to the memory of the 
reader, as I have, I think, brought it to his memory 
already, had begun life as an extreme Radical 
reformer. " The right honorable gentleman," said 
Mr. Gladstone, " secure in the recollection of his 
own consistency, has taunted me with the errors of 
my boyhood. When he addressed the honorable 
member for Westminster [Mr. Stuart Mill], he 
showed his magnanimity by declaring that he would 
not take the philosopher to task for what he wrote 
twenty-five years ago. But when he caught one 



258. THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

who, thirty-six years ago, just emerged from boy- 
hood and still an undergraduate at Oxford, had 
expressed an opinion adverse to the Reform Bill of 
1832, of which he had so long and bitterly repented, 
then the right honorable gentleman could not resist 
the temptation. He, a Parliamentary leader of 
twenty years' standing, is so ignorant of the House 
of Commons that he positively thought that he got 
a Parliamentary advantage by exhibiting me as an 
opponent of the Reform Bill of 1832. It is true, 
I deeply regret it, but I was bred under the shadow 
of the 2freat name of Cannino^ and under the 
shadow of the yet more venerable name of Burke. 
My youthful mind and imagination were impressed 
just the same as the mature mind of the right hon- 
orable gentleman is now impressed. I had con- 
ceived that fear and alarm of the first Reform Bill 
in my undergraduate days at Oxford which the 
right honorable gentleman now feels. My position, 
sir, in regard to the Liberal party is in all points 
the opposite of Earl Russell's. I have none of the 
claims he possesses. I came among you an out- 
cast from those with whom I associated, driven 
from them, I admit, by no arbitrary act, but by the 
slow and resistless forces of conviction. I came 
among you, to make use of the legal phraseology, 
in forma patiperis. You received me with kind- 
ness, with indulgence, generosity, and, I may even 



GLADSTONE SUPPORTS POPULAR SUFFRAGE 259 

say, with some measure of confidence. The rela- 
tion between us has assumed such a form that you 
can never be my debtors, but that I must forever 
be your debtor." In the closing sentences of his 
speech Mr. Gladstone said : " You cannot fight 
against the future. Time is on our side. The 
great social forces which move onwards in their 
might and majesty, and which the tumult of our 
debates does not for a moment impede or disturb 
— those great social forces are against you. They 
are marshalled on our side, and the banner which 
we now carry in this fight, though perhaps at this 
moment it may droop over our sinking heads, yet 
soon again will float in the eye of heaven, and 
it will be borne by the firm hands of the united 
people of the three kingdoms, perhaps not to an 
easy, but to a certain, and a not far distant, victory." 
This was one of the greatest speeches Gladstone 
has ever made, and the frank explanation of his 
conversion to Liberal principles put his antagonist, 
Mr. Disraeli, hopelessly in the wrong. The Re- 
form Bill was defeated by means of the alliance 
between Mr. Lowe and the Tories; and Lord 
Russell and Mr. Gladstone resigned office. Lord 
Derby and Mr. Disraeli came back to power. 
Now, what had happened in the meantime ? Mr. 
Disraeli and Mr. Lowe had opposed the Reform 
Bill of Russell and Gladstone on the distinct 



26o THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

ground that a lowering of the suffrage was the sur- 
render of the Government of England into the 
hands of the ignorant, the improvident, and the 
reckless. That was the case distinctly set up over 
and over again by Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Lowe, 
and on those grounds the Reform Bill was lost. 
The moment Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli came 
back to power, it was made known that they 
intended to introduce a Reform Bill of their own. 
The Houses of Parliament met on the 5th of 
February, 1867, and the Queen's speech announced 
that the attention of Parliament would again be 
called to the question of the representation of the 
people. Mr. Disraeli himself explained afterwards 
very fully in a speech why he had thus come round. 
He told the public that he had spent the recess in 
educating his party up to the level of a liberal 
suffrage. Apparently his conviction was that a 
new Reform Bill had to come somehow or other, 
and he did not see why he should not introduce 
it as well as anybody else. It must give the stran- 
ger some subject for odd reflections on English 
politics when he reads of an English statesman 
who turned out of office a greater English states- 
man because he had introduced a measure for 
lowering the Parliamentary suffrage, and, having 
got into office by that means, at once set about 
to reduce the suffrage still lower than his prede- 



GLADSTONE SUPPORTS POPULAR SUFFRAGE 261 

cesser had attempted to do. This is exactly what 
happened. 

Mr. Disraeli brought in a scheme of reform 
which, though in its beginnings it seemed moderate 
enough, led to the resignation of three of his most 
important colleagues, who naturally thought the 
introduction of any Reform Bill was an abandon- 
ment of the proclaimed Tory sentiments of the 
year before. The late Lord Shaftesbury said in 
a letter, " It seems to me monstrous that a body 
of men who resisted Mr. Gladstone's bill as an 
extreme measure w^th such great pertinacity 
should accept the power he retired from, and 
six months after introduce a bill many degrees 
nearer than his to universal suffrage, and estab- 
lish beyond all contradiction the principle they 
so fiercely combated of giving a predominant in- 
terest to any class," Robert Lowe well described 
the situation. " What was a conflict last year," 
he said, " is a race now." Mr. Disraeli, as he 
accepted the support of the secessionist Liberals 
in opposing Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill, accepted 
now the alliance of the extreme Radicals in the 
extension and the expansion of his own measure. 
The result was that the bill became practically 
a measure of household suffrage, and went in the 
popular direction far beyond the limits which Mr. 
Gladstone had endeavored to go. Mr. Disraeli, 



262 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

of course, did not care in the least for any prin- 
ciple of consistency. In his heart he was prob- 
ably still a Radical Reformer, but, as I have 
suggested before, he took up with the Tories be- 
cause there was not much competitive talent in 
their ranks and he had a good chance of secur- 
ing a leading place. No doubt in his soul and 
sense he despised the stupidity of the men who 
could really believe that a household suffrage 
meant the ruin of England. So he allowed him- 
self to be led by the Radical party of the House 
of Commons, and he surpassed Mr. Gladstone and 
Mr. Bright in his measure for the extension of 
the suffrage. 

Robert Lowe found himself in a peculiar posi- 
tion during the progress of Disraeli's Reform 
Bill. In the former session he had to fight 
against Gladstone and Bright, and was supported 
by Disraeli; in the session of 1867 ^e had to 
fight against Gladstone, Bright, and Disraeli. He 
stuck to his professed principles — to do him 
justice. He had proclaimed himself an opponent 
of a popular suffrage, and he kept up his opposi- 
tion to the end. He had a perfect contempt for 
the poor and the working class and "the people 
who live in these small houses." He fought with 
wonderful pertinacity and skill all through the 
long debates of 1867. His cause, of course, was 



GLADSTONE SUPPORTS POPULAR SUFFRAGE 263 

lost It could not be otherwise when the Lib- 
erals and the Tories were alike determined to 




Robert Lowe 

(From a photograph by Maull & Fox) 



carry a measure of reform. But he fought with 
the desperate tenacity of a brilliant gladiator. To 
this day I never could quite understand the secret 
of his personal success. The question of his posi- 



264 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

tion as a Parliamentary debater has been settled 
long since. Nobody now would think of describ- 
Qf Robert Lowe as an orator belonmno- to the 



m 



c>''^"& 



class of Gladstone or Bright or Disraeli. His 
very defects of voice and articulation would of 
themselves have, almost of necessity excluded him 
from such a place. Part of his success, I think, 
was found in the fact that he was a brilliant liter- 
ary man and leader-writer, addressing a political 
assembly in a style to which that assembly was 
not accustomed. It was as if we could imagine 
Junius making a speech in the peculiar style of 
Junius the writer. Anyhow, the success was cer- 
tain, and the most conspicuous figure of those 
two sessions of debate was not Bright, not Glad- 
stone, not Disraeli, but Robert Lowe. The re- 
mainder of Lowe's career was nothing. He pub- 
lished a volume of verses. He was made a peer, 
and he died in comparative obscurity. He was 
a man who had, I believe, made many enemies 
by his bitterness of tongue and his sarcastic ways. 
I can only repeat for myself that I have the most 
pleasing and genial recollections of my acquaint- 
anceship with him, and that although we had 
hardly any political opinions in common, and he 
never even professed to have any sympathy with 
my national cause, I always found him kindly, 
friendly, and personally sympathetic. 



GLADSTONE SUPPORTS POPULAR SUFFRAGE 265 

At the close of 1867, Earl Russell, the Lord 
John Russell of former years, announced his de- 
termination to retire finally from active politi- 
cal life and from the leadership of the Liberal 
party in the House of Lords. Lord Russell dis- 
tinctly pointed to Mr. Gladstone as the future 
Liberal Prime Minister. Not many weeks after, 
it was announced to the public that Lord Derby, 
owing to his faihng health, had given up the 
Premiership, and that Mr. Disraeli had become 
Prime Minister. So the two great political rivals 
were started in a new sort of rivalry. Mr. Dis- 
raeli was Prime Minister of England, and it was 
perfectly certain that should his party be turned 
out of office Mr. Gladstone would be his successor. 
The event came about sooner than any one in 
England could have expected. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE IRISH STATE CHURCH AND LAND TENURE 

QUESTIONS 

" Gladstone is down in the dust," said a cheery 
and elated Tory, one who would have been cheery 
under all conditions, but was elated now — that 
is to say, just after the passing of Disraeli's Re- 
form Bill. " Dizzy has jockeyed him out of the 
leadership of the democrats, and we sha'n't hear 
of him as Prime Minister in our time." Alas ! 
how easily things go wrong ! The prediction 
was falsified very soon after its utterance. The 
crisis arose on a motion made in the House of 
Commons by an Irish member condemning the 
existence of the Irish State Church. About the 
Irish State Church I need not say much. It 
was a Church established and endowed by the 
State, and its teachings were utterly rejected by 
five-sixths of the Irish people. 

That is almost enough to proclaim its absurdity 
and its injustice. 

The Irish member who brought forward the 
motion, Mr. John Francis Maguire, long since 

266 



IRISH STATE CHURCH AND LAND TENURE 267 

dead, a great personal friend of my own, a man 
whose high character and genuine abihties were 
recognized on both sides of the House, described 
the State Church as " a scandalous and a monstrous 
anomaly." It had been described in even harsher 
terms before by great English Protestants like 
Sydney Smith. Sydney Smith said, in his amus- 
ing fashion, a blending of humor and common 
sense, that "there is no abuse like it in all 
Europe, in all Asia, in all the discovered parts of 
Africa, and in all we have heard of Timbuctoo." 
Mr. Bright spoke in the course of the debate, 
and his speech at once stamped the question as 
one of the most serious importance. He con- 
demned the Irish State Church as strongly as 
Mr. Maguire had done. He admitted that grave 
difficulties of detail were yet in the way of a 
satisfactory arrangement, but in solemn and thrill- 
ing tones he reminded the House that " to the 
upright there ariseth light in the darkness." On 
the fourth night of the debate, however, it was 
that the reality and the gravity of the subject 
were impressed upon every mind. For on that 
fourth night of debate Mr. Gladstone spoke up 
and declared that, in his conviction, the time had 
come when the Irish Church as an institution 
maintained by the State must cease to exist. 
There was only one opinion then in the mind of 



268 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

every reasonable man in the House, and that was 
that the days of the Irish State Church were over, 
that Gladstone had pronounced its doom. 

One immediate and very impressive effect of 
Mr. Gladstone's speech was that Mr. Maguire 
at once withdrew his motion. Only too gladly 
he left the whole subject in the care of the 
one man living who had most power to carry 
the movement against the Irish Church to a full 
success. A few days after the debate on Mr. 
Maguire 's motion Mr. Gladstone gave notice of a 
series of resolutions condemning the existence of 
the Irish State Church. On the thirtieth of March, 
1868, Mr. Gladstone proposed his resolutions. It 
must be observed that Mr. Gladstone was a sup- 
porter of the English State Church. But then 
every argument in favor of the English State 
Church was an argument against the Irish State 
Church. I am not going to enter here into any 
of the arguments for or against the maintenance 
of any State Church anywhere. But the claim 
made by Mr. Gladstone, and all those who 
thought with him, was that it represented the 
great majority of the English people and that it 
had a spiritual work to do which was sympa- 
thized with and accepted by that great majority. 

This, the one strong defence of the English State 
Church, is the very strongest condemnation of 



IRISH STATE CHURCH AND LAND TENURE 269 

the Irish State Church. As it was said at the 
time, " the more strongly an EngUshman was in- 
cHned to support his own Church, the more anx- 
ious he ought to have been to repudiate the 
claim of the Irish Church to a similar position. 
The State Church in Ireland was like a mildewed 
ear blasting its wholesome brother. If the two 
institutions had to stand or fall together, there 
could be but one end to the difficulty : both must 
fall." Mr. Gladstone carried his resolutions by 
a large majority, and Mr. Disraeli announced 
that the Government would dissolve and appeal 
to the country. We have seen already that, on 
more than one momentous occasion, Mr. Glad- 
stone took the opportunity of some motion made 
by a private member to announce a great deter- 
mination of his own. It was so in regard to the 
lowering of the franchise ; it was so in regard to a 
former question touching the arrangements of the 
Irish State Church. Nothing can give a better 
idea of the position which Mr. Gladstone had estab- 
lished in public estimation than the fact that from 
the moment he proclaimed his conviction the 
country saw that there could be only one result. 
The general election came on, and the Liberals 
returned to power. Mr. Gladstone himself was 
defeated in his Lancashire constituency. This 
was, as I have already shown, almost a matter of 



270 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

certainty, but he had been put up for Greenwich, 
a very Radical constituency, and there he was 
elected. Now, in the case of the Irish State 
Church, as in the other instances to which I 
have made allusion, Mr. Gladstone's announce- 
ment of his policy was sudden, but it could hardly 
have been unexpected by most people. Even in 
this short volume I have given evidence enough 
to show that Mr. Gladstone had been losino; for 
a long time all faith in the spiritual ministry of 
the Irish State Church. A man may be a per- 
fect devotee of the principle of a State Church, 
and yet may be conscientiously unable to accept 
the idea that a certain institution is a State Church 
merely because it is authoritatively allowed to call 
itself a State Church, and to pocket the money 
of the State. Most people, therefore, must have 
fully understood that when Mr. Gladstone had 
made up his mind on a certain principle, that 
principle was very likely to be expressed in strong 
political action. Mr. Gladstone himself had given 
out his ideas as to the method with which Ireland 
ought to be governed. He adopted the principle 
announced long ago by Charles James Fox, that 
Ireland ought to be governed according to Irish 
ideas, and that, to quote the words of Fox, " the 
more Ireland is under Irish government, the more 
she will be bound to English interests." Mr. Glad- 



IRISH STATE CHURCH AND LAND TENURE 27 1 

stone prepared for his new task on this principle. 
He made it known that, according to his opinion, 
the three grreat troubles of Ireland — "the three 
great branches of the upas-tree " — were the State 
Church, the land-tenure system, and the system of 
national education. He formed his new Cabinet 
with a view to this career of reform — to the hew- 
ing down of these three branches. Mr. Bright, 
for the first time, accepted political ofhce. It 
should be said that Mr. Disraeli acted with good 
sense and dignity when the result of the elections 
became known. He resigned office at once, with- 
out waiting, according to the usual practice, for 
a formal vote of the House of Commons to tell 
him that he had no longer the confidence of the 
country. I need not go into the events of the 
session at any length. Enough to say that 
the Government carried its proposals that the 
Irish Church should cease to exist as a State- 
supported estabhshment, and should pass into the 
condition of a free episcopal church. The first 
great reform was accomplished in Ireland. 

Nor did Mr. Gladstone wait long to set about 
the second reform. He turned his attention at 
once to the Irish land system. We have heard 
a good deal since that time of the Irish land sys- 
tem, and it is not too much to say that as it 
then existed it has been condemned by every civ- 



2/2 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 




John Bright in later life 

(From a photograph by Mackintosh & Co. , Kelso, Scotland) 

ilized nation in the world. Ireland is almost alto- 
gether an agricultural country. The demand for 
land was in most cases a demand for the first 
necessity of life, and the Irish landlords had it 
almost all their own way, except in the province 



IRISH STATE CHURCH AND LAND TENURE 273 

of Ulster, and could make any terms they liked. 
It was merely a question of " pay whatever the 
landlord asks, or go out of the farm and starve." 
The landlord let to a tenant his farm in what 
was described by Mr. Bright as prairie condition. 
The tenant hired the land in its raw, native state. 
By his own incessant labor and the labor of his 
whole family he succeeded in converting some 
patch of worthless bog into a farm capable of grow- 
ing food for his family. Then the landlord claimed 
the right to raise the rent because of the improve- 
ments which the tenant himself had made. The 
tenant complained, and the landlord simply turned 
him out and let at a higher price the land to 
another bidder. In the province of Ulster things 
were somewhat different. Over the greater part 
of Ulster the system of what was called tenant- 
right prevailed. This system was, indeed, the 
growth of a custom merely, but it had gradually 
come to acquire something like the force of a 
law. In fact, the Ulster population are a sturdy, 
half-Scottish race, and in Ulster there are a great 
many manufactures to fall back upon, and it would 
not have been possible to compel the people of 
Ulster to put up with the land-tenure system — 
that is to say, the utter supremacy of the landlord 
— which the southern and western populations 
had to endure 



274 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

The principle of tenant-right was that a tenant 
should be allowed to remain in possession of his 
holding so long as he paid the rent agreed upon, 
and that he should be entitled, when he gave up 
the land, to compensation for the value of any yet 
unexhausted improvements which he had himself 
made. If in the meantime he was anxious to 
give up the farm, he was free to do what a man 
who has a long lease of a tenancy in England 
may do — he might sell to any bidder, whom the 
landlord was willing to accept as a tenant, the 
right to become his successor in the sjDecified 
occupation of the holding. Put in few words, the 
reform which Mr. Gladstone proposed to make 
was to declare the tenant-right custom in Ulster 
the universal law in Ireland. Mr. George Russell 
observes that when on a former occasion agrarian 
reformers had urged the extension of the tenant- 
right system as a legal institution to Ireland, with 
the view of allaying Irish discontent. Lord Pal- 
merston merely declared that tenant-right was land- 
lord's wrong, and "this imbecile jest," as Mr. 
Russell rightly calls it, had been meekly accepted 
as closing the controversy. Mr. Gladstone pro- 
posed to do exactly that which Lord Palmerston 
had ridiculed as impossible, unlawful, and unjust. 
From the very condition of things it is plain that 
land is entitled to come under the authority and 



IRISH STATE CHURCH AND LAND TENURE 275 

arrangement of the State, just as well as every 
other form of business. There is, indeed, more 
reason that it should come under that authority 
than almost any other form of enterprise or work. 
Land cannot be increased in its extent by any 
power of man. The whole agricultural area of 
Ireland might be submerged in Lake Michigan 
and hardly noticed there. If, therefore, you leave 
the landlord in such a country absolute master 
over his tenantry, to do with them what he will, it 
is plain that you leave him master of their means 
of living and of their lives. The more industrious 
in such a case the tenant was, the more hard- 
working, the more skilful, the more successful, the 
worse it was with him — for all that he had done 
only gave the landlord a better chance of letting 
the land to a new tenant at a higher price. 

There was great talk then about freedom of 
contract and about the right of the landlord to 
enter into a bargain w^ith his tenant uncontrolled 
by any interference of the State. During the 
process of such arguments, to which I listened 
for many years, I was often reminded of the 
chapters in " Monte Cristo " by Alexandre Dumas 
the elder, which described the capture of a Paris 
millionaire banker by an Italian brigand. The 
millionaire grows hungry and asks for something 
to eat. The brigand tells the millionaire he can 



276 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

have anything he hkes within reason — fowls, 
mutton, wine, fruit, pastry, and so forth, but they 
must be paid for. The milhonaire says he should 
like a fowl with some wine. He is told that he 
can have them, but the brigand puts on them 
some enormous and unapproachable price. The 
millionaire storms, the brigand is calm. " You 
can take them or leave them, my dear sir," he 
says ; " there is no compulsion ; here there is per- 
fect freedom of contract." This was exactly the 
freedom of contract which the Irish tenant-farmer 
enjoyed under the landlord system. He was not 
compelled to pay an increased rent because of 
the improvements his own skill and labor had 
made, but if he did not pay he had to pack off 
out of the land, and was perfectly free to go into 
the workhouse. The real question was whether 
there was anything so sacred in the property right 
of the Irish landlord as to exempt him from that 
legislative control which is always interfering with 
the property right of the mine-owner, the mill- 
owner, the railway company, the factory-owner, the 
shopkeeper, the right of the master over his ap- 
prentice, the mistress over the hire and treatment 
of her servants, the theatrical manager over the 
conditions under which his theatre is worked. 
Many people talked at the time as if Mr. Glad- 
stones proposal contained some startling innova- 



IRISH STATE CHURCH AND LAND TENURE 277 

tion, something new and audacious in the making 
of laws. What Mr, Gladstone proposed to do was 
simply to affirm the principle that the Irish landlord 
must submit himself to the same right of State inter- 
vention and control in his dealings with others which 
was established and acknowledged by every other 
class and every other member of the community. 

Mr. Gladstone applied himself to his task with 
an energy and a pertinacity which can only not 
be called surprising because one naturally looks 
for wonders of that kind from Mr. Gladstone. 
Nothing, we should have thought, could have 
been less congenial with Mr. Gladstone's training 
and tastes and habitudes than the study of such 
a question, so dry, so intricate, so localized, so 
foreign to all his previous interests, as that of 
the Irish land system. We have seen that, until 
lately, he had hardly turned his attention to Irish 
questions at all. The position of the Irish State 
Church would naturally have aroused his interest, 
because it was part of the subject which had 
always occupied his attention ; and when once he 
had made up his mind as to the failure of the 
Irish State Church system, he could have no diffi- 
culty whatever in explaining to any audience the 
reason which convinced him that this ought not 
to be and that that ought to be. The whole sub- 
ject of churches in their various forms had been 



278 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

dear and familiar to him from his earhest days. 
But to the question of Irish land-tenure he had 
up to his mature years never given any attention 
at all. He must have gone to the study of that 
Irish land-tenure question as one goes to the study 
of a foreign language, yet he made himself com- 
pletely its master in what for any other man would 
have been an incredibly short space of time. His 
explanation of his bill to the House of Commons 
was a perfect masterpiece of clearness, of ampli- 
tude, and of detail. There was something posi- 
tively artistic in the symmetry with which Mr. 
Gladstone arranged his outlines and his details. 
To the ordinary observer it might have seemed 
that such a measure must be necessarily all made 
up of details, and that it would be impossible to 
convey any clear idea of an outline and a form 
through their mass and their complexity. But 
Mr. Gladstone drew his outline with the firm 
hand of a master, so that every one fully compre- 
hended what it meant to describe, and then he 
touched in all the details, laying light, firm hand 
on each, and giving to each its place, significance, 
and proportion. I have often spoken with some 
of the Irish law-officers who helped Mr. Gladstone 
with that measure, men intimately acquainted with 
every fact of the Irish land-tenure system, and 
they were agreed in expressing their wonder at 



IRISH STATE CHURCH AND LAND TENURE 279 

the accuracy and completeness with which he had 
made himself its master. The bill was carried 
through both Houses of Parliament, not, of course, 
without a struggle, but, on the whole, with less 
force of resistance than might have been expected. 
It did not quite succeed in its object. It was a 
first and an experimental measure, and no first 
and experimental measure ever does quite succeed 
in its object. It has had to be amended and ex- 
panded over and over again. It has been amended 
and expanded by Tory as well as by Liberal gov- 
ernments. The whole question of Irish land-tenure 
is even still a subject under the consideration of 
Parliament, and the very session in which I am 
writing has had a new Irish land bill brought in 
by a Tory administration. But Mr. Gladstone's 
land bill of 1870 introduced a new principle, 
which no one since has ever attempted to abolish. 
That new principle was that the Irish tenant was 
entitled to some share and property in the im- 
provements which he himself had made in his 
farm. It was, therefore, in the best sense of the 
word, a revolutionary measure. It created a new 
principle, and that principle has since been settled. 
It did not go nearly far enough in the right di- 
rection, but it showed the direction in which legis- 
lation ought to go, and it was on that account the 
opening of a new era for Ireland, 



CHAPTER XXII 

NATIONAL EDUCATION ; OTHER REFORMS 

These early years of Mr. Gladstone's adminis- 
tration were years of tremendous energy in reform. 
It almost takes one's breath away to recall the 
many splendid reforming enterprises on which 
Mr. Gladstone ventured with a courage that 
seemed never to be daunted. He set himself to 
work to establish a great system of national edu- 
cation for England. Strange to say, up to that 
time there had been no public system of element- 
ary education in England. The State had doled 
out a miserable grant to the help of private 
charity, for the teaching of the children of the 
poor. England was behind many of the countries 
of the civilized world in this respect. She was 
far behind Prussia and most of the German 
States, she was far behind nearly all, if not all, 
of the States of the American Union. This, in 
fact, was the first time when the principle was 
set up that the State ought to provide for and 
enforce a popular elementary education. I do not 
propose to go into the details of this measure, 

. 280 



NATIONAL EDUCATION; OTHER REFORMS 28 1 

and, for one reason, because it was not put into 
form by Mr. Gladstone's own personal inspiration. 
There were, indeed, some parts of it which did 
not commend themselves altogether to his feel- 
ings or his judgment. But he adopted it as, on 
the whole, the best scheme that then had a 
chance of success. It, too, like the Irish land 
measure, has been the subject of much contro- 
versy and many schemes of alteration and improve- 
ment. But, like the Irish Land Bill also, it made 
a new departure and established a new principle. 
A measure was carried in 1871 to substitute the 
ballot for open voting in the elections for the 
House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone had at one 
time been opposed to the ballot, as, indeed, most 
other pubHc men in England had been. It is a 
curious fact that Mr. Gladstone began as an 
opponent of the ballot, and afterwards became 
convinced by practical experience and observation 
that the secret vote, on the whole, was far better 
than the open system; while Mr. John Stuart 
Mill, who began as an advocate of the ballot, 
had ended as its opponent. The bill went throuoh 
both Houses, and was carried into law. Not the 
faintest idea now exists in the mind of any 
English public man of proposing to repeal the 
measure. The immemorial British fashion of 
recording one's vote in public, and thereby leav- 



282 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

ing the tenant at the mercy of his landlord, the 
small shopkeeper at the mercy of the local mag- 
nate, the factory-worker at the mercy of the 
factory-owner, is almost forgotten now in this 
country. Educated young people of the present 
generation would probably find it hard to believe 
that such a system, with all its glaring and mon- 
strous abuses, could ever have existed in a civilized 
country. 

Another great abuse which Mr. Gladstone abol- 
ished was the system of purchase of commissions 
in the army — the system under which a young 
man with money bought himself an officer's com- 
mission, and bought, step by step, his subsequent 
stages of promotion. So far as I remember, no 
such system was known in the army of any other 
great and civilized State. Mr. Gladstone was 
determined on abolishing it, and as he found 
that the House of Lords was determined to stand 
in the way, he abolished it himself by what I 
may call a constitutional coup d'etat. It came 
about in this manner. Purchase in the army was 
allowed and established by the warrant of the 
sovereign alone. The whole practice was there- 
fore dependent upon royal regulation. It was in 
the power of the sovereign at any moment to say 
that the purchase of commissions should cease. 
Now, the House of Commons, the Representative 




Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India 



NATIONAL EDUCATION; OTHER REFORMS 283 

Assembly, had, under Mr. Gladstone's inspiration, 
pronounced against the purchase system. The 
House of Lords still held out in its favor. Mr. 
Gladstone, therefore, acting on his constitutional 
authority as Prime Minister, advised the Queen 
to cancel the royal warrant which authorized the 
buying and selling of commissions in the army. 
The Queen, who is the first and only constitu- 
tional sovereign who ever sat on the throne of 
England, acted on the advice of her Prime Min- 
ister. A new royal warrant was at once issued, 
declaring that all purchase or sale of commissions 
in the army must come to an end. This step, 
taken by Mr. Gladstone, raised a storm of con- 
troversy in the country. Even some of his own 
followers, some of the most advanced Radicals in 
Parliament, were strongly against it. There could 
be no doubt that the exercise of the royal power 
in abolishing the purchase system was perfectly 
constitutional. The question raised was whether 
the Prime Minister was justified in thus cutting 
short a great Parliamentary controversy by the 
sudden interposition of the royal prerogative. 
There can be no doubt that Mr. Gladstone's 
course was a bold one, bold even to the extent 
of audacity. Probably if he had been content to 
wait, the reform would have been carried in the 
following session. It is certain that the abolition 



284 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

of purchase in the army and the principle of pro- 
niotion there by merit has come to be accepted 
now by the universal public opinion of England. 
There again is a reform introduced by Mr. Glad- 
stone which nobody in his senses would think of 
trying to repeal. But this is just what people 
were saying who condemned the advice which 
brought about the intervention of the royal pre- 
rogative. "Why not wait?" they said. "The abo- 
lition of purchase is certain to come now that the 
House of Commons and public opinion have 
declared against the practice. Why give any 
excuse for the argument that the Prime Minister 
has cut short public controversy on a great public 
question by a course of action which is absolutely 
without precedent ? " There is a great deal to 
be urged in favor of this argument. I said so 
at the time ; I put my opinions on record more 
lately; and I am ready to say the same thing 
now. But, at present, the purchase system hav- 
ing been abolished forever, one's chief interest is 
in the action of Mr. Gladstone himself. It was 
a splendid instance of political intrepidity. It 
carried a great reform. It was not in violation 
of any constitutional principle. On the contrary, 
it still further emphasized the duty of the sover- 
eign to act on the advice of the minister; and 
it won a great battle. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE IRISH UNIVERSITY QUESTION 

I HAVE already mentioned the fact that Mr. Glad- 
stone had likened the three principal defects in the 
system of governing Ireland to the three branches 
of the upas-tree, and had shown how these defects 
belonged to the State Church system, the land 
system, and the system of university education. 
The time had now come, according to Mr. Glad- 
stone's view, for dealing with the question of uni- 
versity education in Ireland. Ireland had two 
universities, that of Dublin — Trinity College, as 
it is commonly called — which bestowed its hon- 
ors on the members of the Protestant Church 
only; and the Queen's University, a lately created 
institution, which was founded on a purely secular 
principle and was therefore condemned by the 
heads of the Catholic Church. Here, then, there 
was, in a country the vast majority of whose people 
were Roman Catholics, one university which would 
not accept the Catholics on equal terms with their 
fellow-subjects, and which, indeed, imposed in an 
indirect and negative way penalties on them for 

285 



286 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

being Roman Catholics, and another university 
which the Roman CathoHc as such could not 
recognize or accept. There was no other univer- 
sity in the country. The Catholics had long been 
loud and earnest in their demands for a chartered 
Catholic university. The argument employed by 
most of the English statesmen was that to grant 
any State aid to a Catholic university would be to 
endow a sectarian institution out of the national 
funds. The Catholics made answer that the Uni- 
versity of Dublin was in fact a State-endowed in- 
stitution, and that the Queen's University was set 
up by a grant from the State. 

Mr. Gladstone made a brave effort to settle the 
question. His proposal was to make the Univer- 
sity of Dublin the one national university in Ire- 
land, and to make it a teaching as well as an 
examining body. Trinity College, Dublin, the 
Queen's Colleges of Cork and Belfast, the existing 
Catholic University — an institution which had no 
charter, but was supported altogether by private 
funds — these bodies were to become affiliated 
members of the new university. The money to 
sustain the university was to come in proportionate 
allotments from the revenues of Trinity College, 
a very wealthy institution ; from the consolidated 
fund, the fees of students, and the surplus of Irish 
ecclesiastical property. Trinity College and each 



THE IRISH UNIVERSITY QUESTION 287 

of the other affihated colleges would be allowed 
to frame schemes for its own government. Thus, 
therefore, Mr. Gladstone proposed to establish in 
Ireland one central university to which existing 
colleges and colleges to exist hereafter might affili- 
ate themselves and in the governing of which they 
would have a share, while each college could make 
what laws it pleased for its own constitution, and 
might be denominational or undenominational as it 
thought fit. The Legislature would give an open 
career and fair play to all alike, and in order to 
make the university equally applicable to every sect 
it would not teach the disputed branches of know- 
ledge or allow its examinations for prizes to include 
any of these disputed questions. The colleges 
could act for themselves with regard to the teach- 
ing of theology, moral philosophy, and modern 
history. The central university would maintain a 
neutral ground so far as these subjects were con- 
cerned, and would have nothing to do with them. 

That is a description of the scheme quite full 
enough for the readers of to-day. With regard to 
the provision which excluded theology, moral phi- 
losophy, and modern history, it may be borne in 
mind that Stuart Mill had lono^ been endeavorina: 
to convince the world that the teaching of history is 
not one of the functions of a national university, 
and had better be left to private education. I only 



288 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

mention this fact in passing because some of the 
severest attacks made on Mr, Gladstone's bill by 
what are called cultured people were made on the 
ground that he excluded those great subjects from 
the teaching of the proposed Irish university. It 
is, therefore, only fair to observe that a man of the 
culture and intellect of Stuart Mill had preached 
the doctrine before Mr. Gladstone adopted it, and 
tried to put it into practice. There is a great deal 
to be said for the views of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. 
Mill ; but it is not necessary for me to go into the 
subject here. In the debate on the whole question, 
Mr. Disraeli, especially, scoffed at the notion of a 
university which was not to be " universal " in its 
teaching. Mr. Disraeli, who, as far as education 
was concerned, was far below the level of Gladstone 
and Mill, had evidently got it into his head that 
a university was so called because it taught every- 
thing that could possibly be learned in the uni- 
verse. The scheme had a great deal to recommend 
it if philosophic compromise could be made the 
principle of communities and of parties ; but it had 
one fatal defect — it pleased nobody. Nearly all 
the different parties in the State found fault with it. 
The English Nonconformists cried out against the 
measure which proposed to endow a distinctly 
Catholic university out of national funds. The 
Irish Protestants were furious at the proposed 



THE IRISH UNIVERSITY QUESTION 289 

breaking up of the long-established university sys- 
tem in Dublin. The Catholics declared that it did 
not in any sense meet the justice of their claims as 
regards the Catholic university. It soon became 
certain that a large number of the Protestant Non- 
conformist Members of Parliament were determined 
to oppose it. Mr. Disraeli's speech during the 
closing debate was full of brilliancy and triumphant 
sarcasm. He knew what the end was to be, and he 
exulted in the already certain defeat of his great 
opponent. Mr. Gladstone's speech in reply was 
dignified, serene, and even pathetic. It was the 
speech of one who could bear anticipated defeat 
without bitterness, without despondency, " rather in 
the independence of a quiet than the disdain of a 
despairing heart," if I may quote some almost for- 
gotten words of Bulwer Lytton. I listened to that 
speech of Mr. Gladstone's with an absorbed inter- 
est. So, indeed, must every one have done who 
had the privilege to hear it. Especially touching 
were the few sentences in which Mr. Gladstone 
expressed his regret for his inevitable severance 
on that occasion from the Irish National Members 
with whom he had worked so happily and so suc- 
cessfully on the bill for the abolition of the Irish 
Church and the Land Tenure scheme for Ireland. 
The division and the defeat came. It was not, in- 
deed, a great defeat. The measure was thrown out 



290 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

by a majority of only three. But, as Mercutio says 
of his wound, " 't is not so deep as a well, nor so wide 
as a church door, but 't is enough — 't will serve." 

Mr. Gladstone, of course, resigned office at once, 
and Mr. Disraeli was sent for by the Queen. Mr. 
Disraeli, however, prudently declined to accept 
office under such conditions. He pointed, not 
unreasonably, to the fact that on most questions 
there would be a majority against him ; and he 
drew, in a subsequent speech, an amusing picture 
of the troubles imposed on a Prime Minister who 
has on various great public questions a majority of 
the House of Commons against him. Of course, it 
miofht be said that he could have dissolved Parlia- 
ment and called for the judgment of the country 
at a general election. But, as he once more not 
unreasonably put it. How could he appeal to the 
constituencies against a decision of the House of 
Commons which had his thorough approval ? Dis- 
raeli, in fact, knew quite well that the time was not 
opportune for him, and he also knew that the oppor- 
tune time was coming soon. He held to his re- 
solve ; he declined to undertake office, and there 
was nothins: for it but that Mr. Gladstone should 
return, not indeed to power, but to office. There 
is a vast difference between being in office and 
being in power, as Mr. Disraeli had pointed out 
in the amusing speech to which I have lately al- 



THE IRISH UNIVERSITY QUESTION 



291 



luded. Mr. Gladstone came back, not to power, 
but to office. It must have been a painful thing 
for him to continue still to be Prime Minister 
under such conditions. He came back to office 





Osborne House, Isle of Wight 

(From a photograph by Frith & Co., Reigate, England) 

very unwillingly, as everybody knew. He was 
tired of the whole business. He had good rea- 
son to feel disappointed. His health had been 
severely injured by the excessive strain of the 
work to which he had devoted himself with an 
unsparing and almost reckless self-sacrifice. He 
knew well, every one must have known, that, com- 



292 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



ins back to office under such conditions, he must 
come back with a diminished and a discredited 
influence. Any outside observer could have seen 
all that. It must have been borne keenly into 
Mr. Gladstone's knowledge. A man with a less 
magnanimous nature than Mr. Gladstone might 
have refused point-blank to undertake so thank- 
less, so disheartening, and so futile a task. But 
that was not Gladstone's way. Sensitive and 
highly strung as he was by nature, he was always 
able to subject his own personal feelings to the 
public good. He came back to office seeing, as 
everybody must have seen, that the end was near. 
In truth, the force of reforming energy had 
spent itself for a time. In English poHtical life 
there is a law of action and reaction so palpable 
in its working that almost any intelligent observer 
might undertake to issue a weather prophecy about 
its movements. Mr. Gladstone had come into 
power on the crest of the third wave, as boatmen 
say, and with that impulse had accomplished a 
magnificent series of reforms in legislation. Now, 
however, the force was spent. The outer public 
had grown tired of mere reform. Great political 
questions in England are not always decided by 
the men who take a real and active interest in 
them. The fate of a great administration is often 
decided by men whose general inclination is to be 



THE IRISH UNIVERSITY QUESTION 293 

let alone unless when something is in the air which 
has a special attraction for them. They murmur 
to their own souls that they are rather tired of 
reforming measures; that they are rather tired of 
Gladstone and his energy; and when election comes 
they either stay at home and do not vote at all 
or they vote against the energetic and wearisome 
administration. It must have been clear to Mr. 
Gladstone that a turn in the tide had come, Still, 
he had no inclination to embarrass public life and 
Parliament by refusing to return to office, although 
well knowing that he was only to be a stop-gap 
there. With what Burke would have called a 
"proud humility," he bowed his head and entered 
the Prime Minister's room again. During his 
short career of renewed office he enabled the late 
Mr. Fawcett to carry a measure for the abolition 
of religious tests in the University of Dublin. He 
did the best he could do just then for that cause 
of university education in Ireland which he had 
so generously undertaken; as he could not bring 
in a great reform, he brought in one of a minor 
degree, but still on the way to a complete scheme. 
Better a small reform than nothing, he thought. 
His nature was always a curious compound of 
the thinker, perhaps even of the dreamer, and of 
the worker. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE ALABAMA QUESTION 

I NEED not go into the internal troubles which, 
according to public conjecture, helped towards 
the speedy overthrow of the Liberal party. 
There was some talk of dissensions, talk likely 
enough to be true, among the members of the 
Liberal Cabinet. Election after election here and 
there, as vacancies were made, began to be lost 
to the Liberals. It was plain that the full tide of 
reaction was in force. 

The Alabama question had undoubtedly cre- 
ated some trouble for Mr. Gladstone's Govern- 
ment. It has always seemed to me that one of 
the best and bravest things Mr. Gladstone ever 
did was his acceptance, and I might even say his 
enforcement, of the principle of arbitration with 
regard to that question. The Treaty of Wash- 
ington, arranged in May, 1871, prevented, in all 
human probability, the breaking off of diplomatic 
relationship, and possibly even the outbreak of a 
war between England and the United States. 
The American Government had done what any 

294 



THE ALABAMA QUESTION 295 

Englishman with any brains in his head would 
have known they would do, and were entitled to 
do — they insisted on a settlement of the claims 
arising out of the damage done by the Alabama 
and other cruisers of the Southern States which 
had been built in English dock-yards and had 
sailed from English ports and were sometimes to 
a great extent manned by English sailors. 

Up to a certain point the English statesmen 
had rather paltered with, the question ; they had 
expressed themselves willing to go into arbitra- 
tion as to any individual claims for personal dam- 
age done which a few Englishmen might have to 
present on the one side of the quarrel and a few 
Americans on the other side. But this was not 
by any means what the American statesmen re- 
quired, and what, as everybody now believes, they 
were entitled to expect. Their claim was made 
as a nation injured by another nation. Such a 
claim was not to be met by merely admitting a 
willingness to pay for any personal damages that 
this or that American citizen mio-ht have sus- 
tained. Mr. Gladstone's Government, under his 
direct inspiration, finally agreed to accept the 
most ample and complete terms for the discus- 
sion of the whole controversy. They declared 
themselves willing to treat the subject in dispute as 
a national and not merely an individual lawsuit. 



296 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

A commission was sent out to Washington 
which was to hold conference with an American 
commission, and to enter upon all the different 
subjects of dispute still unsettled between Eng- 
land and the United States. Of these subjects 
the principal were the Alabama question, the San 
Juan boundary, and the Canadian Fishery ques- 
tion. The Dominion of Canada was represented 
on this commission. Of the English commis- 
sioners, one is still alive, the Marquis of Ripon. 
Lord Iddesleigh, who was then Sir Stafford 
Northcote, and Mr. Mountague Bernard, Professor 
of International Law at the University of Oxford, 
are dead. Sir John A. Macdonald, who repre- 
sented Canada, is also dead. I was in the United 
States during the whole time while that tribunal 
held its sittings, and I need hardly say how deep 
was the interest with which I endeavored to fol- 
low its proceedings. The result we all know. 

Out of the Washington treaty came the Geneva 
award. It was welcomed with satisfaction by all 
reasonable men on both sides of the Atlantic. 
But with a certain class of persons in England it 
did not tend to make the Liberal administration 
popular. Especially it did not tend to make Mr. 
Gladstone popular with these people. Mr. Dis- 
raeli, in the debate on the address on the opening 
of the session in 1872, denounced, not exactly 



THE ALABAMA QUESTION 297 

the Alabama treaty itself, but the formal para- 
graph in the Queen's speech explaining it. He 
insisted that some of the claims admitted for ar- 




Stafford Henry Northcote, Earl of Iddesleigh 
(From a photograph by London Stereoscopic Co.) 

bitration amounted to the sort of tribute that 
might be exacted from a conquered people. 

Mr. Gladstone made in reply a speech of admi- 
rable good temper and sound sense and elo- 
quence. He pointed out that most of Mr. Disraeli's 



298 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



arguments applied only to what were called the 
indirect or constructive claims, which claims had 
never been really supported or sanctioned by 
American statesmanship. 

Mr. Gladstone's speech was, in substance, an 




The City Hall at Geneva 

(As seen from the Promenade de la Treille. The main facade faces the Rue de I'Hotel de 
Ville. The windows of the hall since known as "The Alabama Chamber" are those 
opening out on the Promenade) 

appeal to the patriotism and the good feehng of 
the English-speaking people on both sides of the 
Atlantic. All the same it is quite certain that 
his popularity in England was diminished by 
the mere fact that he had accepted an arbitration 
which told heavily against England. " We have 



THE ALABAMA QUESTION 299 

caved in to the United States," or, indeed, " to 
the Yankees," was the common phrase used in 
certain EngHsh clubs, dining-rooms, and smoking- 
rooms. One of Mr. Gladstone's own colleagues, 
Mr. Lowe, entered on an elaborate defence of 
the treaty, which was more likely to increase than 
to diminish its unpopularity among certain classes 
of Englishmen. Mr. Lowe went on to argue 
that we had at least saved a great deal of money 
by the arrangement. He was at the pains to 
point out that, whether we were right or whether 
we were wrong, it cost us much less to pay up 
the claims than it would have cost us to lose or 
even to win in a warlike struggle with the United 
States. If any line of argument might have 
turned sensible and reasonable EnQ:lishmen asfainst 
the treaty, it would have been such a line of argu- 
ment as this. It exactly sustained the doctrines 
the Tories always preached about what was then 
called the Manchester school, the school of Cob- 
den and of Bright, that the men of that school 
cared nothing for the honor of their country, 
but only balanced the expense of maintaining it 
against the cheapness of sacrificing it. No really 
thoughtful Tory could ever have believed that 
Mr. Gladstone felt or encouraged such senti- 
ments. As a matter of fact, neither Mr. Cobden 
nor Mr. Bright ever expressed or encouraged or 



300 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

felt them. But Cobden and Bright had undoubt- 
edly said things now and again which an unscru- 
pulous enemy might twist into an expression of 
disregard for the national honor. Nothing ever 
said by Mr. Gladstone could be perverted into 
any such meaning. Yet, all the same, the result 
of the Alabama treaty was to put him into the 
position, among the minds of the vulgar, of one 
who had, in homely phrase, " knuckled down to 
the Yankees." 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE TIDE TURNS 

Parliament had been summoned for February 
the fifth, 1874, with the important words "for the 
despatch of business." It is perhaps hardly nec- 
essary to tell most of my readers that during the 
recess Parliament is summoned nominally from 
time to time, not with any practical purpose of 
bringing it back to work, but in order that it may 
be constitutionally liable to be recalled to work if 
any sudden emergency should arise. But when 
the words are added " for the despatch of business," 
that always means that Parliament is summoned 
for actual work on that particular day. Parlia- 
ment, then, was summoned for February the fifth, 
1874, for the despatch of business. On the night 
of January the twenty-third, 1874, an amazing re- 
port began to spread abroad among certain limited 
circles of political men in London. I remember 
that night well; perhaps I may be allowed to de- 
scribe it in words of my own which were published 
a few years after the occasion : " Men were mys- 
teriously beckoned away from dinner-tables and 



302 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

drawing-rooms and club-rooms. Agitated .messen- 
gers hurried to ministerial doors seeking for infor- 
mation. There was commotion in the newspaper 
offices. The telegraph was set in constant action. 
Next morning all the world read the news in the 
papers. Mr. Gladstone had suddenly made up his 
mind to dissolve Parliament, and seek for a resto- 
ration of the authority of the Liberal Government 
by an appeal to the people." 

Mr, Gladstone explained the reason for his de- 
cision in an address to his constituents. He 
declared that he could no longer put up with the 
difficulty of seeming to have the authority he had 
received in 1868 now sunk "below the point nec- 
essary for the due defence and prosecution of the 
public interests," and that, therefore, he proposed 
to appeal to the constituencies by a dissolution of 
Parliament, in the hope of thus obtaining a popular 
approval of his general policy. Should he be suc- 
cessful in that endeavor, he undertook that, if re- 
stored to power, he would introduce a series of 
financial reforms which would include the complete 
abolition of the income tax. Now I think there 
can be no mistake as to the general impression 
produced by the publication of Mr. Gladstone's 
address, and by the dissolution of Parliament. 
The grumbling was especially widespread among 
his own followers and his own party. The time 



THE TIDE TURNS 



303 



of the Parliament had nearly run out, and there 
were many Liberals who had little hope of being 
returned again to the House of Commons. Such 
men were most unwilling to lose even a year of 
Parliamentary existence. They could not under- 
stand Mr. Gladstone's motive, and they looked 
upon themselves as positively ill treated. " Why 
didn't he think about us ? " they muttered among 
themselves. " We have voted with him very faith- 
fully, and he might have had a little more consid- 
eration for us." Such men as these could not 
understand the motive of Mr. Gladstone. To him 
it seemed ignoble that a Prime Minister should 
remain in office one hour after he had found reason 
to believe that he no longer possessed the confi- 
dence of the majority of the people. To him a 
seat in Parliament was a matter of utter insienifi- 
cance unless it enabled a man to do some Q-Qod for 
his constituents and for the country. He might 
almost have spoken the eloquent words of Burke 
in the imm^ortal speech at Bristol; and, indeed, 
there are many striking points of resemblance 
between the character of Burke and the character 
of Gladstone. " It is certainly," said Burke, " not 
pleasing to be put out of the public service. But 
I wish to be a member of Parliament to have my 
share of doing good and resisting evil. It would, 
therefore, be absurd to renounce my objects in 



304 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

order to retain my seat. I deceive myself, indeed, 
most grossly if I had not much rather pass the 
remainder of my life hidden in the recesses of 
the deepest obscurity, feeding my mind even with 
the visions and imaginations of such things, than 
to be placed on the most splendid throne of the 
universe tantalized with a denial of the practice 
of all which can make the greatest situation any 
other than the greatest curse." 

Mr. Gladstone flung himself into the contest 
with all his characteristic earnestness and energy. 
He had not usually been what we call an open-air 
orator. But on this occasion he went down to 
Greenwich and addressed enormous popular meet- 
ings held on Blackheath. It was there that I for 
the first time heard Mr. Gladstone as an open-air 
orator addressing a monster meeting. There are 
in this country, at all events, three distinct kinds 
of political eloquence. There is the eloquence of 
the House of Commons. There is the eloquence 
of the platform indoors at one of the great gather- 
ings in St. James's Hall, for instance ; and then 
there is the eloquence addressed to the monster 
meeting in the open air. These, as I have said, 
are quite distinct forms of oratory, and the man is 
indeed seldom to be met with who can make a 
success with all three. Many a speaker who can 
hold the House of Commons in breathless interest 



THE TIDE TURNS 305 

during a long oration is found ineffective in St. 
James's Hall, and would be hopeless at an open-air 
meeting. On the other hand, many a powerful 
platform speaker who can carry his audience with 
him is found wholly unsuited to the peculiar style 
and atmosphere of the House of Commons. I 
confess that I had some doubt whether Mr. Glad- 
stone, with all his powers of voice, would be able 
to suit himself exactly to the task of addressing 
a great open-air meeting. His warmest admirers 
must admit that he has a somewhat dangerous eift 
of over-refining, and over-refining would never do 
for a monster meeting. The speaker must strike 
strong, direct, resounding, echoing blows. But 
Mr. Gladstone had not got three sentences of his 
speech out before I felt certain that he would 
prove himself just as much at home with the 
Blackheath meeting as with St. James's Hall or 
with the House of Commons. His voice swelled 
and rang out to the uttermost verge of the vast 
crowd, and no listener had any occasion to trouble 
himself for one moment by a fear lest he should 
miss something of what the great orator was 
saying. 

I never admired Mr. Gladstone more than I 
did during those days when he fought so splen- 
didly against impending fate. The fate was im- 
pending, however, all the same. When the 



306 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

elections were over, it was found that the Con- 
servative party had a majority of about fifty, and 
that even the calculation of that majority was 
made on an assumption far too favorable to the 
Liberals, for it assumed that every Irish Home 
Ruler might be counted as a Liberal. In fact, 
the great reforming ministry was down in the 
dust. The Liberal statesmen had tried too much, 
had done too much, had spent their force in too 
many splendid efforts and enterprises,' and the 
time came at last when the spirit of Conservative 
reaction prevailed over them. Mr. Gladstone fol- 
lowed the example set by Mr. Disraeli in 1868, 
and at once resigned office. This was by far 
the best course to take. It had been the custom 
on former occasions that a Ministry defeated at 
a general election should return to office and 
wait until the reopening of Parliament and until 
the majority of the House of Commons had, after 
a long debate, declared its want of confidence in 
them. All this would have been, under such 
conditions, but a mere waste of time. Mr. Dis- 
raeli was right in setting the example. Mr. Glad- 
stone was right in following it. The Queen 
invited Mr. Disraeli to form a Conservative ad- 
ministration, and he was not long in settling 
down into office. 

Then came another surprise and shock for the 



THE TIDE TURNS 



307 



Liberals in all parts of the country. Mr. Glad- 
stone suddenly announced, in a letter to Lord 
Granville, dated March 12, 1874, that "for a 
variety of reasons personal to myself, I could 
not contemplate any unlimited extension of active 




Buckingham Palace 

(From a photograph by Valentine, Dundee, Scotland) 

political service, and I am anxious that it should 
be clearly understood by those friends with whom 
I have acted in the direction of affairs that at my 
age I must reserve my entire freedom to divest 
myself of all the responsibilities of leadership at 
no distant time. The need of rest will prevent me 



:?o8 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

from giving more than an occasional attendance 
in the House of Commons during the present 
session. I should be desirous shortly before the 
commencement of the session of 1875 to consider 
whether there would be advantage in my placing 
my services for a time at the disposal of the Lib- 
eral party, or whether I should then claim exemp- 
tion from the duties I have hitherto discharged. 
If, however, there should be reasonable grounds 
for believing that, instead of the course which I 
have sketched, it would be preferable, in view of 
the party generally, for me to assume at once 
the place of an independent member, I should 
willingly adopt the latter alternative." This 
letter brought back to the minds of some of us 
a passage in that speech of Burke's from which 
I have already quoted. " Gentlemen," said Burke, 
" I have had my day. I can never sufficiently 
express my gratitude to you for having set me 
in a place wherein I could lend the slightest help 
to great and laudable designs. If I have had 
my share in any measure giving quiet to private 
property and private conscience, if by my vote 
I have aided in securing to families the best 
possession, peace, if I have joined in reconciling 
kings to their subjects and subjects to their 
prince, if I have assisted to loosen the foreign 
holdings of the citizen and taught him to look 



THE TIDE TURNS 309 

for his protection to the laws of his country, and 
for his comfort to the good will of his country- 
men, if I have thus taken my part with the best 
of men in the best of their actions, I can shut 
the book. I might wish to read a page or two 
more, but this is enough for my measure — I have 
not lived in vain." Can it, then, be true that 
Mr. Gladstone, in the words of Burke, has had 
his day ? He was much older even at that time 
than Burke was when he thus expressed his readi- 
ness to close the book. But it had never occurred 
to any of us to regard Mr. Gladstone as an old 
man, or even as within measurable distance of 
old age. To us he was the very embodiment of 
strength and spirit and indomitable energy. 

The news sent a thrill of surprise all over the 
country, and a shock of utter amazement and dis- 
turbance through the whole Liberal party. There 
can be no doubt that for some time many of Mr. 
Gladstone's most devoted followers were complain- 
ing bitterly of the course he had taken. Mr. Glad- 
stone pleaded his advancing years ; but, it was 
asked, were not the years of Mr. Disraeli still 
more advanced, and had Mr. Disraeli said one 
word about seeking retirement ? was he not, on 
the contrary, entering with alacrity on a great 
new chapter of his political career .f* Men 
gloomed darkly and whispered sadly about the 



3IO THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

manner in which the party was to be left to 
cureless ruin. Let it be understood that many 
of the bitterest of these utterances came out of 
the very devotion to Mr. Gladstone and con- 
fidence in his leadership which were felt by the 
vast majority of his followers. Why does he leave 
us ? How can we exist without him ? That was 
the manner in which the questions shaped them- 
selves. It did, indeed, seem at one time as if the 
whole Liberal organization had received a blow 
from which in our time it never could recover. 
The very commotion which his threatened retire- 
ment created among the best of his own followers 
was but another tribute to his political genius, 
another form of proclaiming to the world that 
in the belief of the Liberal party he was the one 
man indispensable to the Liberal cause. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

GLADSTONE IN RETIREMENT 

Mr. Gladstone seemed resolved to shake him- 
self free, for the time at least, from the responsi- 
bilities of political leadership. On the thirteenth of 
January, 1875, he addressed another letter to Lord 
Granville, in which he explained that the time, he 
thought, had arrived when he ought to revert to 
the subject of his letter of the twelfth of March in 
the former year, " Before determining," said Mr. 
Gladstone, " whether I should offer to assume the 
charge, which might extend over a length of time, 
I have reviewed with all the care in my power a 
number of considerations, both public and private, 
of which a portion, and these not by any means 
insignificant, were not in existence at the date of 
that letter. The result has been that I see no 
public advantage in my continuing to act as the 
leader of the Liberal party, and that, at the age 
of sixty-five, and after forty-two years of a laborious 
public life, I think myself entitled to retire on the 
present opportunity. This retirement is dictated 
to me by my personal views as to the best method 

3" 



312 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

of spending the closing years of my life. I need 
hardly say that my conduct in Parliament will 
continue to be governed by the principles on 
which I have heretofore acted ; and whatever ar- 
rangements may be made for the treatment of 
general business, and for the advantage or con- 
venience of the Liberal party, they will have my 
cordial support. I should, perhaps, add that I am 
at present, and mean for a short time to be, 
engaged on a special matter that occupies me 
closely." 

The " special matter " turned out to be chiefly 
an attack on " The Vatican Decrees in their bear- 
ing on Civil Allegiance," in the form of a pamphlet 
which had an immense circulation and caused a 
very angry controversy. The pamphlet was the 
outcome of various articles written by Mr. Glad- 
stone on the question of Ritualism and the popular 
dread, which he did not share, that the ritualistic 
clergy could, if they would, carry the Church of 
England over to Rome. The publication of the 
pamphlet on the Vatican Decrees in their bearing 
on civil allegiance caused disappointment and con- 
sternation among the Roman Catholics in Eng- 
land, Ireland, and the Empire at large. The long 
friendship between Mr. Gladstone and the late 
Cardinal Manning was chilled for a time in the 
blasts of this debate. 




jj#' 



Henry Edward, Cai-ldinal Maninim, 

(EUiott & Fry, London) 



GLADSTONE IN RETIREMENT .313 

Perhaps it would have been better if Mr. Glad- 
stone had left the whole matter alone. But Mr. 
Gladstone could not help himself ; he had to follow 
his star. His mind refused to give itself abso- 
lutely up to any one study of life forever. Great 
as he was in the House of Commons, his vast 
energies needed some other field of activity now 
and then. It was not like the case of Mr. Disraeli, 
who, when he had an interval of rest from the cares 
of ofhce, sat down and threw off a three-volume 
novel. Mr. Disraeli was not burning to write the 
novel. He had written novels before. He could 
wait very placidly until a suitable opportunity came 
for adding to their number. But Mr. Gladstone 
had eminently what the heroines of modern fiction 
are fond of calling a complex character. When 
he had spent a certain time over politics and po- 
litical reform, and when he had either carried or 
failed to carry some great measure, then it ap- 
peared to him, or it appeared to be borne in upon 
him, that there was something else waiting at his 
hand that he could do and which he ought to en- 
deavor to do with all his might. Thus it seemed 
to have been borne in upon him, at the time that 
he had made up his mind to resign the leadership 
of the Liberal party, that the state of the Church 
of England required his immediate attention. 
Probably the Public Worship Regulation Bill, 



314 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

brought into the House of Lords, and (!:oming 
thence down to the House of Commons, inspired 
Mr. Gladstone with the idea that he ought to in- 
terpose on behalf of the Church of England. Mr. 
Gladstone emers^ed for a moment from his retire- 
ment to oppose the bill. I need not go into the 
question raised by the introduction of this meas- 
ure, which has no interest for us now otherwise 
than as a subject affecting the internal discipline 
of the State Church. But undoubtedly these theo- 
logical debates led him on to the publication of 
his pamphlet against the Vatican Decrees. I need 
not revive this old controversy. It belongs now 
to ancient history. Its interest for me, and I 
fancy for most of my readers, will mainly be found 
in the fact that it illustrated the irrepressible, in- 
domitable eagerness of Mr. Gladstone's mind to 
take a kind of rest, after it had stretched itself out 
in one direction, by stretching itself out in another. 
However, Mr. Gladstone held to his resolve not 
to retain the leadership of the Liberal party in 
the House of Commons. He stood by his plea 
for immunity founded on the right of his sixty-five 
years. People were not slow to observe that if 
Lord Palmerston had retired from public life or 
had died at the age of sixty-five, England would 
never have known the fulness of his power as a 
Parliamentary debater. Some of us, no doubt, re- 



GLADSTONE IN RETIREMENT 315 

membered also that if Count von Moltke had gone 
into private Hfe or had died at the age of sixty- 
five, the world would never have known that he 
had the capacity to be the greatest soldier since 
the days of Napoleon and Wellington. But Mr. 
Gladstone persevered in his resolve, and at last it 
became actually necessary that the Liberal party 
should choose his successor. 

The choice was not easy, although it was very 
narrow. By far the greatest orator and the great- 
est influence in the party after Mr. Gladstone, an 
orator who sometimes even surpassed Mr. Glad- 
stone himself, was John Bright. But every one 
knew that John Bright would not accept the of- 
fice of leader. With all his capacity for hard 
work at a spell, there was a great deal of the 
indolent man about him. He told me himself 
that his pet ambition in life was an unconquer- 
able desire to be doing nothing. This desire, 
unconquerable though he called it, he managed 
to trample in the dust whenever public service 
was required of him for any good purpose. But 
it was certain that he had no taste for the manage- 
ment of a party, and that he would not become the 
Liberal leader. 

Mr. Robert Lowe, afterward Lord Sherbrooke, 
was, as we have seen already, a man of great ability, 
a brilliant debater, endowed with high intellect and 



3i6 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



furnished with high culture, a man of eloquence 
and epigram and paradox, with an almost fatal 
gift of sarcasm, and hopeless as a possible leader 
of the Liberal party. The choice was limited 

practically to the 
late Mr. W. E. 
Forster and to 
Lord Harting- 
ton, at present 
the Duke of 
Devonshire. 
Mr. Forster was 
a Yorkshire man, 
with all York- 
shire's rugged- 
ness of ability, 
a strong man, 
but not concilia- 
tory, a man who 
put his head 
down and went 
straight at anything that came in his way. And 
so the choice fell upon Lord Hartington. 

Now between Mr. Gladstone and Lord Harting- 
ton there was a whole vast field of difference. The 
Liberal party, although it saw nothing better to 
do, never realized so thoroughly the extent of its 
loss as when it found that Lord Hartington was 




William Edward Forster 

(From a photograph by Elliott & Fry, London) 



GLADSTONE IN RETIREMENT 317 

to be Its leader. Let me not do injustice to Lord 
Hartington. He was a man of ability and of abso- 
lute political integrity. There was nothing what- 
ever to win him away from political integrity. He 
had a great position, he was heir to vast wealth and 
to a dukedom. But he had not in his nature one 
single gleam of enthusiasm. It would have been 
impossible for him to inspire enthusiasm in others. 
No ray of imagination brightened his slow, solid, 
some people even said stolid, common sense. The 
hearts of some of the more advanced Liberals sank 
within them when they found that they had come 
from Mr. Gladstone to Lord Hartington. 

But there was nothing else to be done, and 
Lord Hartington was elected leader of the Liberal 
party. Without any disparagement to Lord Hart- 
ington, it may be said that the light seemed sud- 
denly to have gone out. The Liberal party became 
for the time colorless and lifeless to the ordinary 
observer. Mr. Gladstone himself, in one of his 
Homeric studies, points out the supreme light of 
interest which always follows the movements of 
Achilles. When Achilles is off the stage, the 
scene is comparatively dark. So it was with Mr. 
Gladstone himself and the House of Commons. 
Everything seemed lacking in interest. Lord 
Hartington did his very best. He strove hard 
to make himself a good debater, and to a certain 



3l8 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

extent he succeeded. He had to struggle against 
the heaviest and worst manner that it is almost 
possible to conceive in the case of a man with 
any gift of speech at all. His voice was harsh 
and heavy. His manner was stolid, and he had 
no real oratorical capacity or even inclination. He 
was perfectly well aware of his own defects, and 
was to a great extent embarrassed by a contin- 
ual over-consciousness of the vast difference in 
debating power between him and his superb 
predecessor. But he set himself to work with a 
thoroughly British doggedness of determination, 
and in the end he hammered himself, if I may 
use such an expression, into a really good Parlia- 
mentary debater. For myself, I may say that I 
watched Lord Hartington's career at the time, 
and I conceived a decided admiration for his 
dogged resolve to do the best he could. 

But of course the whole condition of things 
was changed so far as public interest was con- 
cerned. There were, for the time at least, no 
more great debates. Disraeli had no longer an 
opponent fit to cross swords with him. Bright 
took little part in public affairs. The Tories for 
the most part had it all their own way. Lord 
Hartington could and did improve his own style 
of Parliamentary speaking, but the truth soon be- 
came only too apparent that he could not lead 



GLADSTONE IN RETIREMENT 319 

a Liberal party. Men who had come lately into 
the House were crying " Forward ! " while Lord 
Hartington was crying " Back ! " It was known 
to every one that Lord Hartington had no real 
sympathy with the objects and the aspirations of 
the newer Liberal party. He was, of course, an 
aristocrat by birth and training and association, 
and he had not one gleam of the imagination or 
the enthusiasm which has sent many a born and 
bred aristocrat into the ranks of some great popular 
movement. He was perfectly willing that justice 
should be done to every reasonable and temperate 
claim on behalf of the people, but he could not 
look forward, and he apparently could not believe 
in anything but a grudging concession of portion 
after portion of some popular claim. He differed 
only from the high old-fashioned Tories in the 
fact that he was not willing to put his foot down 
and say, Nothing shall ever be done in the way of 
change. 

There was always in Mr. Disraeli, and there 
was for a time in the late Lord Randolph 
Churchill, a strong inclination for the cause of 
the English working democracy, and for an en- 
deavor to take the lead in that way and convert 
the workingman into a Tory democrat. But Lord 
Hartington cared for nothing of all this, and did 
not want to convert anybody into anything. He 



320 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



was perfectly content to let things rest as they 
were, with the half-reserved admission that if any 
change should have to be made it ought to come 

by little and lit- 
tle and at distant 
intervals of time. 
Many people 
thought him 
h a u g h t y, b e- 
lieved him to 
set high account 
upon his rank 
and to look 
down with con- 
tempt upon all 
his social infe- 
riors. For my- 
self, I do not be- 
lieve that Lord 
Hartington ever 
troubled himself 
about his rank 
or thought about his rank. He had always been 
the son of a Duke and heir to a dukedom, and he 
was just as well accustomed to it as he was accus- 
tomed to being a man. But he was shy, reserved, 
and awkward in manner, and this was what made 
people think him distant and haughty. In any 




Spencer Compton Cavendish, Eighth Duke 
OF Devonshire 

(From a photograph by the London Stereoscopic Co.) 



GLADSTONE IIM RETIREMENT 32 1 

case it can be easily understood what an immense 
difference there was between such a man as this 
and the leader whom the Liberal party had just lost. 

Mr. Gladstone appeared now and again in the 
House of Commons and took part in a debate. 
Every time he spoke only served to impress the 
Liberal party more and more with the greatness of 
the loss it had sustained. Mr. Disraeli meantime 
was playing a showy and an ambitious part. He 
was athirst for influence in foreign affairs and 
even for intervention in foreign affairs. He had it 
for a time all his own way. Mr. Lowe stood up 
to him once or twice, and held his own very 
pluckily and manfully. But Mr. Lowe was only 
an isolated gladiator, and Mr. Disraeli was the 
master of many legions. Therefore Mr. Disraeli 
ran the country into all manner of enterprises 
abroad. He brought up again a so-called impe- 
rial principle, which was to restore the policy 
and the system of Elizabethan days ; and in 
fact the foreign policy of Great Britain went, 
if I may use so vulgar an expression, " on the 
rampage." 

Where, all the time, was Mr. Gladstone ? the 
Liberals kept asking. He was engaged in polem- 
ical controversy with Cardinal Newman and Car- 
dinal Manning. One general conclusion was 
adopted on both sides of the House : that Mr. 



322 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Gladstone never meant to lead a political party 
again. It was urged, and with great show of 
reason, that a man with his knowledge of affairs 
would never have got into antagonism with all 
the Roman Catholic subjects of the Queen and 
all Roman Catholic sovereigns and princes and 
people everywhere if he had the remotest inten- 
tion of assuming again such a part in public life 
as might lead once more to his becoming Prime 
Minister. People did not reflect that all through 
his career he had a positive passion for theologi- 
cal study and for theological controversy. 

In his youth, as we have seen, he was anxious 
to become a clergyman, and if he had done so 
he would have become, in all human probability, 
one of the greatest Churchmen England has ever 
known. Down to his latest days, whenever he had 
a chance, he always sought relief from^ politics in 
classical study or in theological dispute. At this 
particular period of his career Mr. Gladstone no 
doubt sincerely believed that his political work 
was over. There seemed nothing particular for 
him to do, and according to all appearance the 
reign of the Tories was likely to be long. He 
had always a contempt, hardly even disguised, for 
Disraeli's flashy foreign policy, but he probably 
thought that at this time there was no great harm 
to be done, and, at any rate, not much to be accom- 



GLADSTONE IN RETIREMENT 323 

plished by formal opposition. But those who be- 
lieved that Mr. Gladstone had buried his whole 
existence in a controversy conducted, so to speak, 
in the Roman catacombs, soon found how com- 
pletely they had misunderstood the man and 
failed to take due account of the possibilities of 
the time. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

ACHILLES RECALLED 

The moment was soon to come when Mr. 
Gladstone was to be seen in the front of the 
fight again. Like Achilles, he was soon to come 
with a rush forth from his tent and lead on the 
battle. It was the irony of fate, indeed. Who 
brought him out of his tent? Was it an appeal 
from Lord Hartington or from Mr. Bright.? 
Nothing of the kind. Neither Lord Hartington 
nor Mr. Bright brought back Mr. Gladstone to 
political leadership. Mr. Disraeli did it him- 
self. Mr. Disraeli, all unconscious of what he 
was doing, brought back to the battle the great 
swordsman with whom he was never quite able 
to compete. Mr. Disraeli's speeches and his 
action on the Bulgarian question summoned Mr. 
Gladstone in a moment away from his theologi- 
^cal studies, and, before England well knew what 
was happening, he was there again to the front, 
the practical, although not yet the nominal, leader 
of the Liberal party. 

In the meantime the Government of Mr. Disraeli 

324 




The Houses (if Pakliaaienp 



ACHILLES RECALLED 325 

was not doing particularly well so far as domestic 
affairs were concerned. The Tory statesman had 
nothing striking to offer to the country. If Mr. 
Gladstone had tried to do too much, it seemed 
as if Mr. Disraeli were inclined to do too little. 
He appeared to prefer in domestic affairs to cling 
to the policy, supposed to be safe, of letting 
things alone. But this is seldom safe in England. 
People soon get tired of a Government which 
does little or nothing in domestic affairs. They 
want to have a sense of being kept alive by their 
rulers. It may seem strange, but to me it is 
perfectly certain that the outsider class who quar- 
relled with Mr. Gladstone because he was always 
giving them a surprise soon began to grumble 
at Mr. Disraeli because he was giving them no 
surprise at all. Besides, it must be owned that 
he had suddenly got into stormy waters in for- 
eiofn affairs. It was a time of trouble with Russia 
and with Turkey, and Mr. Disraeli was disposed 
to go much farther with what we may call the 
Jingo policy than some of his own colleagues 
were willing to do. Probably, too, he was grow- 
ing tired of a long Parliamentary career. He had 
had almost every success to which he could have 
aspired. The long day's task was all but done. 
On the eleventh of August, 1876, he spoke for the 
last time in the House of Commons, and then he 



326 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

passed into the House of Lords as Lord Beacons- 
field. He crowned his career by accepting for 
himself the title which was at one time offered to 
a far greater man, Edmund Burke, and which 
Burke had declined on the ground that splendid 
titles were then of little value to him. I heard 
Mr. Disraeli's last speech in the House of Com- 
mons, as I heard later on his last speech in the 
House of Lords. Each was a memorable occa- 
sion. The first was the closing of a great politi- 
cal career. The last was the closing of a great 
personal ambition. 

Let me go back, however, to Mr. Gladstone's 
reappearance in the front of the political field. 
The circumstance that brought about this sud- 
den event was the conduct of the Turkish Gov- 
ernment in the province of Bulgaria. Bulgaria 
was probably one of the worst-governed places in 
the world. The Turkish Government ruled by 
its pashas, and its pashas made life intolerable 
for the people in Bulgaria. An insurrection broke 
out there, and the Sultan sent large numbers of 
Bashi-Bazouks and other irregular troops to put 
down the rising. They did put it down, and 
with a vengeance. Their idea, if they can be sup- 
posed to have had any idea, seems to have been 
to make a desert and call it peace. There was 
simply a battue or massacre of Bulgarians. Re- 



ACHILLES RECALLED 327 

ports began to filter into Constantinople of the 
wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children. 
The correspondent of the London " Daily News " 
in Constantinople inquired into these reports and 
found them only too true. The " Daily News " 
afterward sent out its brilliant Irish-American 
correspondent, the late Mr. MacGahan, to the 
scene of the slaughter, and Mr. MacGahan was 
able to verify with his own eyes the terrible truth 
of the reports. It had been contended by the 
friends of the Ottoman Government in England 
that there had been an armed insurrection, and 
that the insurgents were conquered in fair and 
open conflict. Mr. MacGahan saw with his own 
eyes whole villages whose streets, otherwise de- 
serted, were covered with the bodies of slaughtered 
women and children. 

Mr. Disraeli was singularly unhappy in his way 
of dealinor at first with the terrible stories which 
came from the correspondent of the " Daily News" 
at Constantinople. No doubt he did not believe 
in them. But he took no trouble to make any 
inquiries. His worst enemy could not suppose that 
he was a man indifferent to human suffering, or 
that if he thought there was anything in the stories 
he would have made fun of them. But he appears 
to have assumed at once that there could be noth- 
ing serious in any statement made by the foreign 



328 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

correspondent of a London Liberal newspaper. 
Therefore, when questioned in the House of Com- 
mons on the subject, he treated the whole matter 
in his most audacious vein of persiflage and sar- 
casm. He described the reports as " coffee-house 
babble." He made fun of the massacres, and 
was especially sportive about the tortures. Ori- 
ental races, he boldly declared, were not in the 
habit of applying themselves to torture ; they 
generally, he insisted, " terminated their connec- 
tion with culprits in a more expeditious manner." 
Now, Mr. Disraeli in his earlier days had been 
in European Turkey and in Asia Minor. Being 
an Oriental himself by extraction and by sympa- 
thy, he must have read some books about Oriental 
history. He must have known, too, that the tort- 
ure of enemies was very commonly practised 
among Oriental races. Yet he stood up in the 
House of Commons and had the fatuity — it can 
be called nothing less — to insist that torture was 
hardly known in the East, and the bad taste to 
make jokes about the stories that were told of 
outraged and mutilated women. 

A tremendous effect was produced upon the 
whole country by the narratives of Mr. MacGahan 
and by the reports of Mr. Baring, the English 
consul, who was sent out especially to Bulgaria 
to make inquiries, and whose offlcial reports bore 



ACHILLES RECALLED 329 

out only too well the investigations and the con- 
elusions of the special correspondent of the "Daily 
News," Mr. Bright effectively described the agi- 
tation which arose in England as an uprising of 
the English people. So it was, but where was 
the leader .f* Where, to quote the words of Walter 
Scott, " was Roderick then — one blast of Rod- 
erick's bugle-horn were worth ten thousand men " ? 
Roderick, that is Gladstone, came to the front 
and sounded a tremendous note upon his bugle- 
horn. He put himself in front of the agitation, 
and forgot for the time his polemics and his criti- 
cal essays. He threw his whole soul into the 
movement against the Ottoman Government in 
Bulgaria. He made speeches and brought for- 
ward motions in the House of Commons. He 
addressed meetings all over the country. He was 
the principal orator at a great meeting held in 
St. James's Hall in London, one of the most 
enthusiastic meetings it has ever been my fortune 
to attend, and where he made one of the most 
powerful and impassioned and at the same time 
convincing speeches I have ever heard even from 
his lips. Even Mr. Carlyle came forth from his 
seclusion and from his usual indifference to politi- 
cal movements of any kind, in order to send a letter 
to the promoters of the meeting in St. James's Hall 
to declare his conviction that the expulsion of the 



330 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Turks from Europe, though a somewhat drastic 
measure, was yet the only hopeful remedy for the 
oppression and the miseries inflicted by the Otto- 
man Government on its subject populations in the 
southeast of Europe. 

As I listened to the speeches at that meeting, 
my memory carried me back to distant days when, 
as a very young man, I had heard John Henry 
Newman deliver his famous lectures on the Eastern 
Question. That was just before the outbreak of 
the Crimean War, and what Newman told us, and 
told us vainly, would be the only outcome of the 
war is accepted now as gospel truth by every party 
and by every public man in England. I remember 
one thrilling sentence in which Newman declared 
that the Turk had just as much right to his domin- 
ion in Europe as the pirate has to the sea which he 
sails over and ravages. 

Mr. Gladstone issued his famous pamphlet called 
" Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East." 
In the pamphlet he declared that the only way to 
secure any lasting good for the Christian popula- 
tion of Turkey was to turn the Turkish officials 
out, " bag and baggage." The words were seized 
upon by some of Mr. Gladstone's political oppo- 
nents. These persons professed or pretended to 
believe that Mr. Gladstone was calling out for the 
actual physical expulsion of all the Turks, men. 



ACHILLES RECALLED 



331 



women, and children, out of Europe, and the ad- 
mission of Russians in their stead. What Mr. 
Gladstone meant was, of course, obvious and clear. 
He meant that the Turkish Government as a gov- 
ernment should cease to reign in Europe. It will 
come to that in the end. It will have to come to 
that before very long. If Mr. Gladstone had been 
to the front of the battle in 1895 ^i^d 1896, as he 
was in 1876, civilization probably would not have 
been horrified and disgraced by the prolonged 
massacres of Christians in Armenia. 

In 1876, however, Mr. Gladstone's movement 
was completely successful. It ended — I am hurry- 
ing over familiar historical details — in the setting 
up of Bulgaria as a practically independent prov- 
ince under the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan. 
It is now a well-ordered and a prosperous State. 
Many events conspired to bring about its practical 
independence, but I know of no influence which 
had a greater power that way than the position 
taken up by Mr. Gladstone as the leader of the 
agitation in England. 

Mr. Disraeli soon after passed through to the 
House of Lords. Mr. Gladstone was compelled by 
the force of events to resume his position as leader 
of the Liberal party. He was compelled, indeed, 
to do more than that. The Conservative Govern- 
ment was fast breaking down. Mr. Gladstone 



332 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

again and again cliallenged the Tories, who had 
had six years of office, to appeal to the country by 
dissolution and a general election, and thus make it 
certain whether the constituencies were or were 
not in favor of their policy. The Tories knew that 
a general election must come on within another 
twelve months in any case. So they took heart of 
grace, and announced a dissolution of Parliament. 

The result of the general election was that the 
Conservatives were for the time utterly overthrown. 
They were routed, horse, foot, and artillery. It 
was a complete catastrophe. When the votes at 
the elections were counted up, it was found that the 
Tory party was nowhere. The Liberals came back 
with a majority of more than one hundred and 
twenty. No Liberal statesmen had ever before 
been backed up by so splendid a following. There 
was a moment of official delay, of unavoidable hesi- 
tation, of formal anxiety and suspense. For whom 
was the Queen to send.f* On whom was she to 
impose the task and the responsibility of forming a 
new administration .f* Mr. Gladstone was merely, 
in the official sense, an ordinary Liberal Member of 
the House of Commons. Lord Hartington was 
the leader of the Opposition in the House of Com- 
mons, and Lord Granville was the leader in the 
House of Lords. The Queen sent in the first 
instance for Lord Granville, and afterward for Lord 



ACHILLES RECALLED 



333 



Hartington. But, of course, Lord Granville and 
Lord Hartington perfectly well knew that neither 
of them had led the Liberal party to victory. One 
name, if we may 
so put it, came 
out of the Lib- 
eral polling- 
booth, and that 
was the name of 
Mr. Gladstone. 
Lord Granville 
and Lord Hart- 
ington alike de- 
clared that on 
Mr. Gladstone's 
shoulders alone 
could rest the 
responsibility of 

forming a new Granville George Leveson-Gower, Second 

Earl Granville 

administration. , , , . . c ■ n ^ 

(From a photograph by the London btereoscopic Lo.) 

" They both as- 
sured the Queen," says Mr. George Russell, " that 
the victory was Mr. Gladstone's, that the Liberal 
party would be satisfied with no other leader, and 
that he was the inevitable Prime Minister. They 
returned to London in the afternoon and called on 
Mr. Gladstone in Harley Street. He was expecting 
them and the message which they brought, and he 




334 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

went down to Windsor without a moment's delay. 
That evening he kissed hands, and returned to 
London as Prime Minister for the second time. 
Truly his enemies had been made his footstool." 
Mr. Disraeli's Eastern policy and Mr. Disraeli's 
speeches on the Bulgarian question had forced Mr. 
Gladstone to the front, and made him Prime Minis- 
ter once again. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

THE TWO SPHINXES, IRELAND AND EGYPT 

Mr. Gladstone, however, had troubles enough 
before him to embarrass the work of any ordinary- 
man. He had no longer Mr. Disraeli to oppose 
him, but his natural impulses compelled him to 
take up a course of action which was attended 
by difficulties insuperable for the time at least. 
He had now become member for Midlothian in 
Scotland. Mr. Gladstone, in his new administra- 
tion, took upon himself the double functions of 
Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

I need not go through the list of the adminis- 
tration, but shall merely mention that Mr. Bright, 
Mr. Chamberlain, and Sir Charles Dilke accepted 
office. The ministry seemed to every observer 
immensely strong, and the majority at Mr. Glad- 
stone's back was overwhelming. Yet it must be 
owned that the years of this Government ended 
for the most part in disappointment and in dis- 
aster. Why was this ? It was simply because 
Mr. Gladstone was Mr. Gladstone and could not 
be anybody else. He could not be Lord Mel- 

335 



336 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

bourne, for example, whose single appeal was, 
" Why can't you let things alone ? " He could 
not be Lord Palmerston, who was perfectly con- 
tent so long as he could humor and propitiate 
and cajole the majority in the House of Com- 
mons, He could not even be Lord John Russell, 
who, although a man of a zeal and earnestness 
much more like to his own, could nevertheless 
express sometimes his willingness to " rest and 
be thankful " for what had already been gained. 
Mr. Gladstone was, but only in his own high, 
unselfish way, like Johnson's Charles of Sweden, 
who thought nothing gained while aught remained 
to be done. To become the head of a govern- 
ment was for him only to be put into a place 
where he must at once occupy himself in trying, 
at any trouble and any pain, to improve the con- 
dition of his fellow-subjects. So the moment he 
was settled into office he began to turn his 
thoughts to new and orreat measures of reform. 

Many events had directed his attention to the 
condition of Ireland. The state of the Irish 
tenant-farmer appeared to him to call for imme- 
diate remedy. I have already spoken of the 
Land Bill for Ireland which he carried through 
in 1870. That bill had established a great prin- 
ciple by making it certain that the tenant as well 
as the landlord owned something in the land 



THE TWO SPHINXES, IRELAND AND EGYPT 337 

which the tenant's own labor had converted from 
a swamp into a productive farm. 

The Land Bill of 1870 was, however, only an 
experiment, and Mr. Gladstone determined to 
advance upon it and improve it. Against him 
he had, of course, in such an attempt, the whole 
strength of the landlord party in Ireland, the 
whole strength of the Tory landlords in England, 
who most mistakenly imagined that their interests 
were bound up with those of Irish landlordism, 
and the whole strength of the House of Lords. 
Mr. Gladstone consented, as a temporary measure, 
to the introduction of a bill which, pending ex- 
pected legislation, should in the meantime secure 
to any evicted Irish tenant compensation for any 
improvements effected in his farm by his own 
industry and his own skill. The House of Lords 
threw out the bill. The effect upon Ireland was 
disastrous. The Irish peasants could not be sup- 
posed to study and to understand all the con- 
stitutional difficulties that stood in the way of 
Mr. Gladstone's scheme of reform. What they 
saw was that the House of Lords — the House 
of landlords — was able to control Mr. Gladstone, 
and that there was no hope from English states- 
manship. 

I do not want to go minutely into the history 
of that most melancholy time ; but something 



338 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

has to be said about it in order to tell aright the 
story of Mr. Gladstone's political life. The Irish 
peasant classes were in despair. Agrarian out- 
rage became frequent in Ireland, and Mr. Glad- 
stone's Government believed it necessary to adopt 
new coercive legislation. The whole thing had 
got into the old vicious circle again. The legis- 
lative refusal of the tenants' risfhts caused ao-rarian 
disturbance, agrarian disturbance gave an occasion 
for coercion, further coercion led only to new dis- 
turbance, and so on da capo. I remember speak- 
ing: in the House of Commons some time during: 
the earlier period of Mr. Gladstone's administra- 
tion, and declaring my conviction that the action 
of the House of Lords in rejecting the Compen- 
sation for Disturbance Bill was the fountain and 
origin of all the agrarian trouble then going on 
in Ireland. I shall never forget how Mr. Glad- 
stone, seated on the Treasury bench, leaning 
across the table, with flashing eyes and earnest 
gestures, called "Hear! Hear! Hear!" to my 
declaration. 

Mr. Gladstone was between two terrible diffi- 
culties at the time, the difficulty with the House 
of Lords and the difficulty with the Irish people. 
The Compensation for Disturbance Bill was 
purely a temporary measure. It merely required 
that the evicting landlord should stay his hand 



THE TWO SPHINXES, IRELAND AND EGYPT 339 

until a complete measure of land reform had been 
introduced, or should compensate the evicted 
tenant for the improvements which that tenant 
himself had made in the landlord's property. It 
may be asked why did not the Irish peasantry 
wait in patience until the full measure of land 
reform had been prepared and introduced. The 
Irish, peasantry are a very intelligent peasantry. 
They saw that the House of Lords had strength 
enough to reject Mr. Gladstone's small and tem- 
porary measure, and they asked what chance 
was there for the passing of his scheme of per- 
manent land reform. Over and over again has 
a tenant-farmer said to me : " We don't blame 
Mr. Gladstone; but we know only too well that 
the House of Lords will never let him do any- 
thing for the good of Ireland." So there grew up 
in the minds and hearts of the Irish people a 
feeling of utter disbelief that anything good could 
ever come for them out of even the best-inten- 
tioned English statesmanship. Agrarian outrages 
are, under such conditions, the natural, the inevi- 
table result of popular despair. 

In the meantime a new state of things had 
arisen in Irish politics. The Home Rule move- 
ment had taken a fresh, an energetic, and even 
an aggressive form. It was now led by a man 
of genius, the greatest Irish leader who had ever 



340 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



been known since the time of Daniel O'Connell. 
Mr. Parnell was then a very young man, but he 
had made himself thoroughly master of the situa- 
tion both in 
I England and in 

Ireland. He 
had an absolute 
and unlimited 
belief in the 
power of consti- 
tutional agita- 
tion in a consti- 
tutional coun- 
try. At no time 
from first to last 
did he give the 
slightest coun- 
tenance to any 
acts of violence. 
But he had 
made up his 
mind to use the 
House of Commons as the platform of Irish agita- 
tion, and to unite Home Rule and Land Reform as 
inseparable elements in the new campaign. His 
policy was to insist on a full hearing for these 
great Irish questions in the House of Commons, 
and, furthermore, — and herein lay the great 




Charles Stewart Parnell 

(From a photograph by Mr. Wm. Lawrence, Dublin) 



THE TWO SPHINXES, IRELAND AND EGYPT 341 

secret of his success, — to insist that if the House 
of Commons would not Hsten to the story of 
Irish grievances, it should do no business at all. 
This was the whole purpose of obstruction as Mr. 
Parnell meant it and planned it. He was confi- 
dent that if we but got a fair hearing we should 
make good the justice of our national claims, and 
his policy was to say to the House of Commons, 
" If you will not listen to us, then neither shall 
you listen to any one else." 

The vigorous assertion of such a policy put, of 
course, a great difficulty in Mr. Parnell's way, and 
at this time Mr. Gladstone was only beeinnino- 
to Study the whole question of Home Rule for 
Ireland. But I know that even then Mr. Glad- 
stone felt a certain sympathy with Mr. Parnell's 
motives and a considerable admiration for his 
courage and his capacit}^ The two forces, how- 
ever, were certain to come into colHsion sooner 
or later. The Irish people began to be, for the 
time, disappointed with Mr. Gladstone. They had 
regarded him as the one statesman who was des- 
tined to do justice to their cause. They found 
only new coercion bills and the supremacy of the 
House of Lords. Mr. Gladstone, on the other 
hand, was, I suppose, somewhat disappointed with 
the representatives of the Irish people. Perhaps 
he thought that they might have trusted him 



342 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

more and waited with less impatience for favor- 
able opportunities. They, on their part, found 
their country drifting into total disorganization, 
and saw no way of putting heart into the people 
and of preventing the spread of further outrage 
than by letting Ireland see that she had a band 
of men who could stand up for her claims in the 
House of Commons and who could, on her behalf, 
resist in constitutional fashion the authority and 
the power of any English government. 

Thus after a while things got from bad to 
worse, and Mr. Gladstone was persuaded by some 
of his official colleagues into allowing the intro- 
duction and passing of a measure empowering 
the authorities in Dublin Castle to arrest and 
imprison for an indefinite time any one they 
pleased and whom they believed to be " reason- 
ably suspected " of dangerous purposes. No 
charge was necessary, no trial or conviction was 
necessary; the man was "reasonably suspected" 
of an intention to do something or other making 
for disturbance and he was forthwith locked up 
in prison. Mr. Parnell himself, Mr. Dillon, Mr. 
Sexton, and nearly all the leaders of the Irish 
National movement were put into prison cells. 
In every tow^n and village all over Ireland the 
principal promoters of the national movement 
were locked up in jail. 



THE TWO SPHINXES, IRELAND AND EGYPT 343 

Mr. Gladstone's heart had never been in this 
business. He had only accepted such a policy 
because his advisers in the Irish Government 
told him that unless armed with such exceptional 
powers they could not undertake to be responsi- 
ble for the maintenance of order in Ireland. Mr. 
Gladstone therefore consented reluctantly to let 
this new development of coercion go on for the 
present. Probably he could have done nothing 
else ; a man not on the spot and not personally 
acquainted with the conditions of Ireland could 
hardly have refused to act on the advice of the 
Irish Government. But I am not speaking lightly 
or without knowledge when I say that Mr. Glad- 
stone himself never had much faith in the efficacy 
of such a coercion measure as that which was 
now administered in Ireland. 

We all remember Burke's famous saying, that 
he did not know how to draw up an indictment 
against a whole nation. More difficult, assuredly, 
it must be to put a whole nation into jail. The 
authorities in Dublin Castle did not put into jail 
just the very set of men whom it would have been 
for the welfare of the country to incarcerate. 
They put into prison men like Mr. Parnell, Mr. 
Dillon, Mr. Sexton, and all manner of other 
men whose private characters and whose public 
conduct alike showed them to be incapable of 



344 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



any sympathy with crime or outrage of any kind, 
and they left out of prison the murderous gang 
who were even then planning the assassination 
of certain obnoxious officials in Dublin Gastle. 

In the mean- 
\ time Mr. Glad- 
\ stone thought it 
right to release 
Mr. Parnell and 
most of his 
friends from 
prison. This re- 
solve led to the 
resignation of 
the late Mr. 
Forster, who was 
then Chief Sec- 
retary to the 
Lord Lieutenant 
of Ireland and 
who was the 
principal author 
of the new coercion scheme. Mr. Forster had gone 
over to Ireland animated with the purest and 
sincerest feelings of kindness toward the Irish 
people. He had, indeed, proved that kindness 
many years before by his personal exertions in 
Ireland to relieve distress at the time of the 




John Dillon 

(From a photograph by Russell & Sons) 



THE TWO SPHINXES, IRELAND AND EGYPT 345 

great Irish famine. But he was a man of a 
strong will and at the same time of a sensitive 
nature. He appears to have got into his mind 
that, as Ireland had reason to know him for her 
friend, she ought to have been content to receive 
any measures from his hand because of his eood 
intentions. Populations, however, do not do 
things in that way, and the Irish people declined 
to keep quiet under the imprisonment of their 
leaders and of neariy all the representative 
Nationalists in the country. Then Mr. Forster 
became angry with the Irish people, and the 
Irish people became angry with Mr. Forster, and 
when Mr. Gladstone insisted on releasine Mr. 
Parnell, Mr. Forster threw up his office. Then 
it soon became apparent that he had imprisoned 
the wrong men; at all events that he had cer- 
tainly not imprisoned the right men. 

The assassin gang of whom I have spoken, and 
who at several times tried without success to 
murder Mr. Forster himself, succeeded in mur- 
dering the Chief Secretary, Lord Frederick Cav- 
endish, and Mr. Thomas Burke, a Dublin Castle 
official, in the Phoenix Park. No crime more 
shocking has startled the public conscience of 
our day. A wild outcry was raised in England 
by many people against Mr. Parnell and his fol- 
lowers, who were openly accused of having had 



346 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



something to do with the instigation of the mur- 
ders. Mr. Gladstone never gave way in the least 
before this outcry or changed the course of his 
pacific policy. Mr. Parnell wrote to him a frank 

and friendly let- 
ter, offering, if 
Mr. Gladstone 
wished it, to re- 
tire from Parlia- 
ment and public 
life altogether 
in order that 
Mr. Gladstone's 
policy should not 




be 



endangered 



in England by 
association with 
so unpopular 
a name. Of 
course Mr. Glad- 
stone declined 
to accept such a 
sacrifice, and strongly advised Mr. Parnell to stick 
to his post, which Parnell did. 

The men who plotted the Phoenix Park mur- 
ders had for one of their motives the desire to 
bring discredit upon every constitutional move- 
ment. One effect of the crime was just the 



Lord Frederick Cavendish 

(From a photograph by the London Stereoscopic Co.) 



THE TWO SPHINXES, IRELAND AND EGYPT 347 

opposite of that which they intended. I date 
the beginning of a really friendly understanding 
between Mr. Gladstone and the Irish National 
party, between the Irish National party and the 
English democracy, from the time when it became 
apparent that the leaders of popular opinion in 
Ireland regarded the criminal and the murderer 
as the worst enemies of the National cause. It 
is but justice to say that the English people gen- 
erally displayed thorough good sense and manli- 
ness throughout the whole crisis. Not one in 
every ten believed for a moment that Mr, Parnell 
and the Irish National party had any manner of 
sympathy with crime. Even among those, the 
minority, who did proclaim such belief, there 
came a sort of reaction. Something, however, 
had to be done to prevent the possibility of fur- 
ther crimes like those of the Phoenix Park. A 
new coercion measure, rigorous indeed and bit- 
terly resented by the Irish representatives, but 
still directed against a movement of crime and 
not meant for the incarceration of everybody 
without trial, or even without charge, was pushed 
through both Houses of Parliament. 

The Liberal Government in the meantime got 
into trouble about their occupation of Egypt. 
There was an uprising in Egypt against the Khe- 
dive under the leadership of Arabi Pasha. And 



348 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

the English Government took the side of the 
Khedive, and the Enghsh fleet bombarded Alex- 
andria. Mr. Bright resigned oflice rather than 
have anything to do with a war policy in Egypt. 
Mr. George Russell says with truth that the great 
majority of Liberals accepted with reluctance, but 
without resistance, a line of action which wore 
"an unpleasant and close resemblance to the 
antics of Lord Beaconsfield." Indeed, -the main 
weakness of Mr. Gladstone's position was in the 
fact that he had accepted a responsibility in 
Egypt which he would never have created for 
himself. He had to accept it ; he could not help 
himself. A great statesman, to whom the coun- 
try looks for the carrying of many reforms, is not 
free to refuse to take ofHce and to endeavor to 
realize those reforms merely because he has at 
the same time to inherit some responsibility for 
a policy which he did not himself initiate. But 
the trouble came all the heavier upon Mr. Glad- 
stone inasmuch as he could have had no heart 
for the task which was imposed upon him by the 
Egyptian policy of his predecessors. The trial, too, 
came hard upon Mr. Gladstone's most devoted fol- 
lowers. Nothing, says Mr. Russell, but absolute 
confidence in Mr. Gladstone's political rectitude 
and tried love of peace could have secured even 
this qualified and negative sanction from his party. 



THE TWO SPHINXES, IRELAND AND EGYPT 349 

The heroic career and striking personality of 
General Gordon had fascinated the public imagi- 
nation, and the circumstances of his untimely 
death awoke an outburst of indionation aoainst 
those who were or seemed to be responsible for 
it. In truth, the Government in England is held 
responsible for everything that happens during 
its time of office. Disraeli laid it down as a law 
that no administration could possibly survive 
three bad harvests. The Coercion Acts told 
against Mr. Gladstone's government in Ireland, 
the crimes in the Phoenix Park told against it 
in England, the Egyptian policy and the bom- 
bardment of Alexandria weakened Gladstone's 
influence with English Liberals, and the death 
of General Gordon roused ag-ainst him the anger 
of the person who is commonly described, and not 
ineffectively described, as "the man in the streets." 
The man in the streets, of course, held Mr. Glad- 
stone responsible for Gordon's death, Mr. Glad- 
stone being just about as much responsible for 
it as the man in the streets himself. Why did 
he not rescue Gordon ? demanded the man in 
the streets. Why did not the rescuing expedi- 
tion reach Khartoum in time ? The question of 
distance and difficulty never troubled the judg- 
ment of the man in the streets. His idea prob- 
ably was that it was about as easy to send an 



350 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

expedition to Khartoum as to send troops to 
Chatham. The man in the streets, however, had, 
as he always has, a good deal to do with the 
direction of public opinion. Decidedly the events 
in Egypt told heavily against the popularity of 
Mr. Gladstone's administration. So keen and, I 
may say, so cruel were Mr. Gladstone's political 
enemies that it was made a charge against him 
that he was seen in a London theatre applaud- 
ing with evident delight a popular comedy on 
the very evening when he must have known of 
Gordon's death. The fact was that when Mr. 
Gladstone visited the theatre no account what- 
ever of Gordon's wholly unexpected death had 
reached London. The story is only worth tell- 
ing because it illustrates the kind of ignoble and 
credulous rancor which political animosity can 
still stir up in the minds of otherwise intelligent 
and honorable Englishmen. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

WAR WITH THE BOERS, THE FRANCHISE BILL, A NEW 

ELECTION 

The Egyptian difficulty was not the only foreign 
trouble which Mr. Gladstone inherited from his 
predecessors. The war with the Boers broke out. 
The English Government seems to have been 
deceived into the belief that the Transvaal Re- 
public had become anxious to be taken under 
the direct protection of England. Sir Theophilus 
Shepstone, says the author of " England under 
Gladstone, 1 880-1 885," was sent out to investi- 
gate the situation. " He seems to have entirely 
misunderstood the condition of things, and to 
have taken the frightened desires of a few Boers 
as the honest sentiment of the whole Boer nation. 
In an evil hour he hoisted the Enorlish flao- in 
the Transvaal and declared the little republic 
a portion of the territory of the British crown. 
As a matter of fact, the majority of the Boers 
were a fierce, independent people, very jealous of 
their liberty, and without the least desire to come 
under the rule to escape which they had wan- 

351 



352 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

dered so far from the earliest settlements of their 
race." 

Mr. Gladstone again and again denounced the 
Conservative policy which had brought about 
the temporary annexation of the Transvaal. The 
people of the Transvaal soon proved that they 
were not anxious to be under the government 
of England. They rose in revolt, if it ought to 
be properly called revolt, and they defeated the 
English troops more than once. Mr. Gladstone 
had in the meantime succeeded to power. Many 
Englishmen, and even some of those who gener- 
ally supported Mr. Gladstone, were strongly of 
opinion that we ought not to come to terms 
with the Boers until we had inflicted on them 
some crushinQT defeat. Mr. Gladstone was not 
of that opinion. He thought we were wrong in 
annexing the Transvaal Republic, and he could 
not believe, as a statesman and a Christian, that 
we ought not to make peace with the Boers and 
give them back their Republic without first massa- 
cring enough of them to satisfy our heroic sense 
of honor. Nobody doubts that England could 
have conquered the Boers, could have sent out 
troops enough to extirpate the whole male popu- 
lation of the Transvaal Republic. Mr. Gladstone 
did not see honor, or credit, or glory, or Christi- 
anity in any such performance. He sent out 




W. E. GLAiLSToxi; 
(From the painting by E. Hader) 



WAR WITH THE BOERS — FRANCHISE BILL 353 

of the bravest soldiers and one of the most suc- 
cessful generals in the English service, Sir Evelyn 
Wood, with the express purpose of coming to 
honorable terms of peace with the Boers. 

Peace was established on fair and honorable 
conditions. The Transvaal Republic was re- 
stored, with a British Protectorate against foreign 
nations and foreign invasion, and with a British 
High Commission, but with the entire local and 
national self-government for which the Boers, to 
do them justice, had fought so well. Mr. Glad- 
stone, of course, was denounced by all the Jingoes 
of England. They raged against him because 
he had allowed the curtain of this drama to fall 
upon what they called the triumph of the Boers. 
Mr. Gladstone went on his course unheeding:. He 
had asked of his own mind and heart and con- 
science what was the right thing to do and he 
had done it. It was a brave act. But it was 
an act only in keeping with the whole of Mr. 
Gladstone's career. 

The one great domestic work of the adminis- 
tration this time was the passing of the Franchise 
Bill, which was a just and necessary sequel to the 
successive extensions of the voting power among 
the people. This measure was worked to a cer- 
tain extent in conjunction with the Tory party. 
It became a measure of redistribution as well as 



354 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

of extended suffrage. In other words, the whole 
scheme of the constituencies was recast. Man)^ 
small boroughs, miserably small boroughs, ceased 
to have separate representation in Parliament and 
became merged into the population of the coun- 
ties. Large counties were distributed into several 
divisions. The measure was carried in the man- 
ner to which I have already alluded by the 
co-operation of both parties, a mode of procedure 
which might well be commended in almost every 
case where the two parties are agreed as to the 
general necessity of a measure. Mr. Gladstone, 
Lord Hartington, and Sir Charles Dilke went 
into a kind of joint committee with Lord Salis- 
bury and the late Sir Stafford Northcote, and the 
details of the scheme were easily arranged. 

The work of the House of Commons was never 
more trying than during this particular Parliament. 
Mr. Lucy, in his clever sketch of Mr. Gladstone, 
from which I have already quoted more than once, 
says that "for comparatively young men on the 
Treasury Bench the physical ordeal was trying. 
Mr. Gladstone, with his threescore years and ten 
upon his back, bore more than his full burden of 
the day's work. He was in his place early and 
late, his so-called ' dinner-hour ' sometimes not ex- 
ceeding thirty minutes. It was no uncommoji 
thing to find him at his post between two and 



WAR WITH THE BOERS — FRANCHISE BILL 



355 



three in the morning after a turbulent night." 
Then Mr. Lucy tells us that toward the close of 
the session of 1884, Mr. Gladstone broke down. 
" The illness, which took the form of fever with 
congestion of 
the lung, was 
serious enough 
to alarm the na- 
tion profoundly. 
Downing Street 
was crowded 
with anxious 
callers." Mr. 
Gladstone, how- 
ever, triumphed 
over all physical 
troubles. His 
friend, Sir Don- 
ald Currie, took 
him for a trip 
round the coasts 
in , the steamer 
Grantully Castle. Sea and meadow and forest and 
open air were always Mr. Gladstone's best medi- 
cine, and he soon came back prepared to carry 
on the work of the session with renewed energy. 
But it began to be gradually more and more 
evident that the administration had spent its 




Sir Charles Dilke 

(From a photograph by Elliott & Fry) 



356 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

force. Defeat came suddenly and almost unex- 
pectedly on a clause in the Government's annual 
financial scheme. The House immediately ad- 
journed, and next day Mr. Gladstone announced, 
not in so many words, but in the peculiar phrase- 
ology adopted in English Parliamentary life, that 
the Government had resigned office. The words 
he actually used were, " That, in consequence of 
a decision arrived at by the House, the Govern- 
ment had thought fit to submit a dutiful commu- 
nication to Her Majesty." Of course everybody 
perfectly well understood the meaning of that. 
The Liberals were out of office once more. 
They had fallen victims partly to the inherited 
policy of their predecessors and partly to their 
conscientious desire to do justice to the people 
of Ireland, and yet their inability to see their 
way to any course which could really satisfy the 
people of Ireland. They went so far in one direc- 
tion as to infuriate all the Tories and to discourage 
and alienate many feeble Liberals. But they did 
not go far enough in that direction to satisfy 
Ireland. 

Lord Salisbury was invited to form an adminis- 
tration, and after some hesitation, caused by the 
difficulties of the time, he had to consent to do so. 
Lord Randolph Churchill joined the new ministry 
as Secretary of State for India. The administra- 



WAR WITH THE BOERS — FRANCHISE BILL 357 

tion did not last long. On the i8th of November 
Parliament was dissolved, and the question then 
v/hich everybody asked everybody else was, What is 
to be the result of the general elections ? The vote 
at these elections was to be taken under the condi- 
tions of the new Reform Bill which Mr. Gladstone 
had so lately introduced. The result of the elec- 
tions was to give the Tories only a nominal major- 
ity, and even that majority depended altogether on 
the support of the Irish members. Lord Salisbury 
had to go out of office after a very short and un- 
comfortable interval, and Mr. Gladstone returned to 
power once more. 

In the meantime the question of Home Rule 
came up again. An anonymous paragraph ap- 
peared in the newspapers announcing, on no par- 
ticular authority, that Mr. Gladstone had come 
back to office determined to deal liberally with 
the question of Home Rule. The paragraph 
created consternation among the Tories and even 
among many of Mr. Gladstone's own followers. It 
was met with a prompt denial by some of Mr. Glad- 
stone's own colleagues in office. Mr. Gladstone 
himself preserved for a while an ominous silence. 



CHAPTER XXX 



HOME RULE 



Mr. Gladstone's political opponents have made 
much talk about the suddenness of his conversion 
to Home Rule. The imputation is that he became 
a convert to the principle of Home Rule at the 
moment when he found that Irish Nationalist 
members were returned to Parliament in numbers 
strong enough to hold the balance of power be- 
tween the two great English parties, the Liberals 
and the Tories. I think I shall be able to show 
that the conversion was by no means rapid ; that 
it was, on the contrary, of slow growth, and that it 
was not occasioned by the mere fact that the Irish 
Nationalist members were strong enough to make 
themselves of account to the government of either 
party. 

So long ago as 1879, shortly after I first became 
a member of the House of Commons, Mr. Glad- 
stone showed himself inclined, not indeed to 
favor, but to consider, the question of Home 
Rule. Through a friend of his and of mine, Mr. 
James Knowles, the editor of the " Nineteenth 

. 358 



HOME RULE 



359 



Century," Mr. Gladstone suggested that I should 

write one or two articles for the " Ninteenth 

Century " on the subject of Home Rule. As I 

understood the matter at the time, Mr. Gladstone 

did not give the slightest indication that he was 

in favor of the principle of Home Rule, but was 

of opinion that the 

hour had come when 

a fair statement of the 

whole subject ought 

to be brought under 

the notice of the Ens^- 

lish public. I have 

no doubt that Mr. 

Gladstone suggested 

my name as the writer 

of the articles for the 

reason that I was well 

known to that English 

public as a writer of 

books, and that while I was, and always had been, a 

strong Nationalist in Irish politics, I should not be 

regarded by any one as a man madly anxious to 

injure the British Empire. 

There were two points, as I then understood, 
on which Mr. Gladstone desired that information 
should be given to himself and to the public of 
England. One was the question whether a scheme 




Mr. Justin M'Carthy, M.P., in 1879 

(London Stereoscopic Co.) 



36o THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

of Home Rule could be shaped which could give 
Ireland the management of her domestic affairs 
without disturbing the balance of Imperial con- 
trol. The other question was whether the great 
majority of the Irish people were really anxious 
for the restoration of a National Parliament. 

It has to be remembered that at this time the 
Irish Nationalist members, properly so called, were 
but a small minority of the Irish representation in 
the House of Commons. Those were still the days 
of the high franchise in Ireland as well as in Eng- 
land — only that the franchise was relatively much 
higher in Ireland than it was in England. There- 
fore the majority of the Irish representatives were 
of the landlord class or of the moneyed class. 

I wrote the articles as suggested, and I do 
not suppose they wrought any particular effect on 
the British public. The only possible interest they 
can have now for my readers, or for myself, lies 
in the fact that they show Mr. Gladstone's willing- 
ness at that time to consider fairly the question 
of Home Rule and to have that question brought 
under the notice of the English people. 

Years went on, and meantime Mr. Gladstone 
and the Irish Nationalist members had drifted 
much apart. The English Liberal Government 
was trying once again to keep Ireland quiet 
by means of coercion Acts. An English Liberal 



HOME RULE 361 

Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland had declared publicly 
in the House of Lords that something: was gained 
at all events by driving discontent beneath the 
surface — a statement about as wild as that of 
one who should say that something was gained 
by stopping the smell of pestilential drains. 

Somewhere about that time I happened to meet 
Mr. Gladstone, as we were passing through one 
of the division lobbies of the House of Commons 
to give our votes. He touched me on the arm 
and drew me into conversation with him. He 
said to me, in somewhat emphatic tones, that he 
could not understand why a mere handful of Irish 
members, such as my immediate colleagues were, 
should call themselves par excellence the Irish 
Nationalist Party, while a much larger number 
of Irish representatives, elected just as we were, 
kept always assuring him that the Irish people 
had no manner of sympathy with us or with our 
Home Rule scheme. " How am I to know } " he 
asked me. " These men far outnumber you and 
your friends, and they are just as fairly elected 
as you are." I said to him, " Mr. Gladstone, give 
us a popular franchise in Ireland and we shall 
soon let you know whether we represent the Irish 
people or whether we do not." He said, " You 
know very well that I have always been anxious 
to give a popular suffrage to Ireland as well as 



362 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

to England." I said to him, " Yes, I know all 
that ; I thoroughly appreciate your purpose ; but 
when you can give us that popular suffrage you 
will soon know what are the opinions of the Irish 
people." 

Time went on, and Mr. Gladstone carried in 
1884 his measure which I have just described, 
reforming the suffrage and redistributing the seats 
in Great Britain and in Ireland. The effect of 
this change was to make the franchise in both 
countries something approaching very nearly in- 
deed to manhood suffrage. In Ireland the imme- 
diate result was the total disappearance of every 
representative opposed to Home Rule, except for 
a few Tories in Ulster and elsewhere, and the 
representatives of Dublin University who are 
elected by a purely collegiate vote. The whole 
representation of Ireland was one hundred and 
three members, and out of that the Home Rule 
party returned eighty-three. 

I had some opportunity of talking to Mr. Glad- 
stone after the general election which made this 
change, and he told me frankly that his question 
was answered so far as the national desire of 
Ireland was concerned. Of course he did not 
tell me whether or how far his mind was working 
round in the direction of Home Rule. I did not 
ask him. I had no need to ask him. I knew 



HOME RULE 363 

that the subject had been under his consideration 
for several years. I felt assured that he had been 
thinking it carefully over, and that the result of 
the general elections had convinced him of one 
fact, at all events, about which he had been 
doubtful before. I knew that deep in his mind 
for many years had lain a conviction that there 
is such a thing as nationality, and that a state 
made up of a cluster of nationalities can only 
exist in strength by consulting the wishes of each 
of these as to its domestic affairs. 

It therefore did not come on me as the slightest 
surprise when, in 1885, it began to be publicly 
said that Mr. Gladstone was a convert to the 
cause of Home Rule. His political opponents, 
and, indeed, some of his political supporters at 
that time, went about expressing in open-mouthed 
wonder their opinions as to the suddenness of his 
conversion. To me there was nothing sudden 
about it. Even in my own limited and casual 
experience I had known that the conviction was 
slowly growing up in the mind of the great states- 
man. I am not now discussing the merits of 
Home Rule. That question will settle itself sooner 
or later. What I am anxious to do is to impress 
upon my readers that there is absolutely no truth 
in the story that Mr. Gladstone, having always 
been a convinced opponent of Home Rule, came 



364 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

round to the principle all in a flash the moment 
the Irish Nationalist .members became strong 
enough to hold the balance between rival English 
parties. I think even the facts that I have men- 
tioned ought to be enough to settle that question 
for any impartial mind. 

In his action toward Home Rule Mr. Gladstone 
was perfectly consistent in the true sense of the 
word. He had learned something to-day which 
he did not know yesterday, and he felt bound to 
act upon the knowledge. Unless it is inconsist- 
ent for a statesman to admit the value of new 
information, it was not inconsistent on Mr. Glad- 
stone's part to admit that when opportunity was 
given, the Irish people had proved themselves in 
favor of Home Rule, and to take account of the 
information and act upon it. So far back as 1874 
Mr. Gladstone had publicly said in the House of 
Commons that if it could be proved that there 
was on the part of Great Britain and of Ireland 
any desire to form a scheme which should give 
Ireland a Parliament of her own and relieve the 
Imperial Parliament from the necessity of looking 
after Irish domestic affairs, he did not think much 
of the statesmanship which could not shape a 
plan to suit such a purpose. He said that he 
did not himself see his way, on the spur of the 
moment, to form such a plan, but he could not 



HOME RULE 365 

believe that the intellect of Parliament could fail 
to devise it. As he explained then, his difficulty 
was not so much about the forming of the plan 
as about, what I may call, the previous question ; 
the question whether Ireland really desired a 
national Parliament and whether Great Britain 
would be willing to yield to such a desire. 

Later still, Mr. Gladstone made another admis- 
sion which showed, even more clearly, that if 
Ireland were strong and united in her claim for 
the management of her own domestic affairs, such 
a wish ought to be taken into account by the 
Imperial Parliament. I remember well that, at the 
time, this admission was seized upon by several 
London papers as an evidence that Mr. Gladstone 
was coming over to the cause of Home Rule. 

In point of fact, he had done nothing more in 
either case than to admit that under certain con- 
ditions, which conditions he did not believe to 
exist, it might be necessary for statesmanship to 
open a new chapter in the relations between Great 
Britain and Ireland. I am fully convinced that 
at that time Mr. Gladstone did not believe that 
Home Rule was really called for by the people 
of Ireland and was of opinion that the agitation 
for it was purely factitious and would be transitory. 
When it became known that his mind was made 
up in favor of Home Rule the amazement of some 



366 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

of his own followers knew no bounds. Then, 
and for long after, the great complaint made 
against him by some of his colleagues, in office 
and in opposition, was that he had not consulted 
them. That was a grievance urged in especial 
by Mr. Chamberlain and which appears to have 
rankled in his mind. 

I believe the first colleague consulted was Mr. 
John Morley, who immediately afterward was put 
by Mr. Gladstone into the office of Chief Secre- 
tary to the Lord-Lieutenant, that is to say, of 
Chief Secretary for Ireland, and to whom there- 
fore Mr. Gladstone would naturally turn with a 
communication of such nature. I may say for 
myself that the news, when it came distinctly out, 
brought to me no manner of surprise. I had 
had reason to believe for many years that Mr. 
Gladstone's convictions were growing more toward 
a belief in the rightfulness and even the necessity 
of a scheme of domestic self-government for Ire- 
land. I had seen how, year by year, Mr. Gladstone's 
faith in coercion measures had been falling away. 
I had seen how the heat of temper into which at 
one time he was often betrayed when vexed by the 
obstructive policy of the Irish representatives had 
changed into an apparent understanding of their 
purpose and even into a certain sympathy with it, 
at all events, toleration for it. 



HOME RULE 



567 



It soon came out that Mr. Gladstone's mind 
was made up. Even the fact that at the general 
elections the Irish population, under the direction 




John Mori.ey 

(From a photograph by the London Stereoscopic Co.) 

of their leaders, had voted against him, did not 
change his views. Time had given the answer 
to that question in one of the division lobbies 
so many years before : Why do you, a mere hand- 



368 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

ful of men, call yourselves the representatives of 
Ireland ? His own Franchise Bill, among other 
things, had enabled us to prove that we were the 
representatives of Ireland. Mr. Gladstone knew 
very well that when we voted against him at the 
general elections it was because we had been set 
on by the Tories to believe that Lord Salisbury 
would give us Home Rule, and we were prepared 
to take Home Rule from any hands, the first that 
gave it to us. 

Into the long controversy concerning promises 
made to us by the Tories it would be futile now 
to enter. Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill 
had the immediate effect of creating a new party 
in English political life. Up to this time there 
had been, roughly speaking, only two great politi- 
cal parties, the Liberals and the Tories. The 
Liberals had a certain division among themselves 
in the fact that some were very progressive, even 
as Liberals, and some were so cautious and in- 
clined to hold back that they differed little from 
the more enlightened of the Tories. Still, when- 
ever any party question arose the Liberals usu- 
ally, although not invariably, voted as one man 
and the Conservatives invariably, or almost in- 
variably, voted as one man. 

But now arose a new party, made up of Liberals 
who were opposed to Mr. Gladstone's whole policy 



HOME RULE 369 

of Home Rule and who called themselves Union- 
ists, that is to say, supporters of the Act of Union 
which abolished the Irish National Parliament 
at the beginning of the century. These men 
broke away from Mr. Gladstone and the Liberals 
and set up a party of their own. This party at 
the outset professed and promised to be absolutely 
independent, but after a while, naturally and almost 
inevitably, became absorbed into the ranks of the 
Tories ; and, as we shall presently see, many of 
its leading members soon accepted places in the 
Tory administration. 

The most influential of the Unionists was Lord 
Hartington, now the Duke of Devonshire. The 
most active and conspicuous was Mr. Chamberlain. 
I need not go through the list of other names. I 
do not regard Mr. Bright as a member of the 
Unionist party, because, although to the great 
surprise of some of us he opposed Mr. Glad- 
stone's Home Rule policy, he never identified 
himself with any new political organization, and it 
is utterly impossible to think of his becoming a 
member of a Tory Government. 

The secession of Lord Hartington surprised 
nobody. Lord Hartington had, as I have said 
already, never shown the slightest sympathy with 
genuine Liberalism or with any really progressive 
movement. Lord Hartington's great ambition in 



370 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

life was apparently a desire to be let alone. Mr. 
Chamberlain's action, on the other hand, surprised 
almost everybody. He had come into political 
life as an extreme Radical. He was regarded by 
the old-fashioned Tories as a red republican, a 
revolutionist, an anarchist, and I know not what 
else. They feared him and hated him. He had 
denounced the landlord class in England again 
and again in bitter and in scathing words. He 
was the uncompromising enemy of the House of 
Lords. He was in cordial sympathy and alliance 
with the members of the Irish National party. 
He rose in the House of Commons once to pay a 
tribute of praise to Mr. Parnell and to express 
his regret that he had not paid such a tribute of 
praise long before. He was one of the Commis- 
sioners, if I may use the expression, who arranged 
the famous Kilmainham Treaty, as it was called, 
between Mr. Gladstone's Government and Mr. 
Parnell. 

I had many opportunities of interchanging ideas 
with Mr. Chamberlain at that time, and I never 
understood that he was not in favor of Home 
Rule. When -Mr. Gladstone brought in his first 
Home Rule measure there was some excuse for 
Mr. Chamberlain's withdrawing from the Govern- 
ment. The first Home Rule measure proposed 
to leave to Irishmen the management of their own 



HOME RULE 37 1 

affairs in a Dublin Parliament and to have no 
Irish representatives in the Imperial Parliament 
at Westminster. The Irish National party were, 
on the whole, quite wilhng to accept this pro- 
posal. They did not particularly want to be in 
the Imperial Parliament, and they were glad to 
get Home Rule on almost any terms. 

But there were two strong objections to the 
scheme. One of these, sustained by some Eng- 
lish members of Parliament who were and are 
as strong Home Rulers as I am, was that the 
whole principle which associates taxation with 
representation would be violated by setting up a 
House of Commons which could tax Ireland with- 
out Ireland's consent. The other objection, which 
was started mainly by Irishmen living in England, 
was that if there were to be no Irish representa- 
tives in the Imperial Parliament, there would be 
nobody in that Parliament to look after the in- 
terests of the two or three millions of Irishmen 
living in Great Britain. Therefore there did seem 
some reasonable show of principle in the opposi- 
tion of Mr. Chamberlain and others to Mr. Glad- 
stone's first scheme of Home Rule. . That measure 
was rejected by the House of Commons. 

But when Mr. Gladstone, later on, gave in to 
the pressure of the Liberal objections to his 
scheme and in his second Home Rule Bill, after 



3/2 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

his return to office in 1892 and the general elec- 
tions of that year, provided that Ireland should 
be still represented in the Imperial Parliament 
for Imperial purposes, just as a State in the 
American Union is represented in Washington 
for Federal purposes, Mr. Chamberlain still con- 
tinued to oppose the measure with all his might 
and main. • 

Sir George Trevelyan was one of those who 
had resigned his office in Mr. Gladstone's adminis- 
tration because he could not approve of the first 
Home Rule Bill. Mr. Chamberlain and he then 
made the same objection to the measure. But 
when the main cause of objection was withdrawn 
Sir George Trevelyan at once returned to his 
allegiance to Mr. Gladstone and took office as a 
supporter of the second Home Rule Bill. 

Mr. Chamberlain could not be induced to fol- 
low his example, and persisted in leading a sepa- 
rate party in the House of Commons. His attitude 
was perplexing to those who had acted with him 
in former days. People of course interpreted it 
in different ways. Some said that it was the 
story of Disraeli over again. Disraeli began as 
a Radical and almost a Socialist. The com- 
monly accepted theory of his life is that he found 
there were too many clever and rising men on 
the Liberal side and he thought he had better 



HOME RULE 373 

betake himself to the Tories, among whom there 
was certainly no redundancy of youthful genius. 
According to this suggestion, Mr. Chamberlain's 
idea was that there was more chance for him on 
the Tory side than there could be under the over- 
masterinof influence of Mr. Gladstone. 

Mr. Chamberlain was dissatisfied, people insisted, 
because Mr. Gladstone would persist in remaining 
at the head of affairs. He was ambitious and 
might have said, like Hamlet, whom he resem- 
bled so little in most ways, " I lack advancement." 
In one of his speeches about that time he made an 
unlucky reference to the satisfaction it gave him 
to be in the society of English gentlemen. Ill- 
natured critics seized upon the phrase and twisted 
it and turned it to all manner of applications. 
One perverse critic quoted the saying of Becky 
Sharp in " Vanity Fair " to George Osborne, by 
whose family she had once been employed as gov- 
erness and whom she now, having got to a higher 
place, wished to annoy : " But O ! Mr. George, 
what a pleasure it is to find one's self in the society 
of English gentlemen." 

Naturally such criticism did not tend to make 
Mr. Chamberlain any the better affected toward his 
former friends and colleagues. He went steadily 
along his new way. He became a defender of the 
House of Lords. He became a champion of the 



374 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

cause of the landlords. He opposed every Liberal 
measure. Finally, as his enemies put it, he had his 
reward. He became a member of a Tory Govern- 
ment. He became, as such, a colleague of Lord 
, , Hartington, of 

' the Lord Hart- 

' i 

jip»^ I ington whom, 

: ^^^ ^, ' when leader of 

^^ " the Liberal party 

'■'At- ■ -^ 

■^HiHH^^KwiHH^^IHi^H actionarv for his 

Joseph Chamberlain " late " leader of 

(From a photograph by Elliott & Fry) +-l^p Liberal DartV 

Probably the Unionist party has no future before 
it. It is likely to become wholly absorbed in 
Toryism. There was no particular reason why 
Lord Hartington, the present Duke of Devonshire, 
should ever have had anvthin^ to do with Radical- 
ism and Radical measures. He probably would 



HOME RULE 375 

have described himself as a Whig of the old school, 
if he had really taken the trouble to consider what 
the Whigs of the old school were. But he took his 
political position just as it came to him, and he was 
content for a long time to work under Mr. Glad- 
stone with patience, if without enthusiasm. He 
did the work set for him to do steadily and loyally 
enough, although he showed himself more than 
once a little puzzled by Mr. Gladstone's interest in 
the cause of the Irish tenant. The Home Rule 
scheme was quite too much for him, and rather 
than be a Home Ruler he consented to become a 
Tory. When such a man once enters the Tory 
ranks there is no conceivable reason why he should 
ever emerge from them. 

In Mr. Chamberlain's case it is not likely that, 
even if he wished to return to the Liberal party, 
the Liberal party could welcome him back. When 
the Home Rule question is settled, and it will be 
settled some time, let pessimists say what they 
may, there will be no further reason for the exist- 
ence of any so-called Unionist party. 

Mr. Gladstone meanwhile bore himself with 
characteristic courage and good feeling. He had 
lifted Mr. Chamberlain into power and Mr. Cham- 
berlain had turned against him. That in itself 
would be nothing to find fault with. No man in 
public life is supposed to pledge himself to follow 



3/6 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

any leader whithersoever the leader may go. If 
Mr. Chamberlain was conscientiously opposed to 
Home Rule for Ireland, he was absolutely right in 
withdrawing from Mr. Gladstone's Government 
when Mr. Gladstone went in for Home Rule. But 
in this instance Mr. Chamberlain had set himself 
against Mr. Gladstone with a bitterness and a 
vehemence which scandalized many even of Mr. 
Chamberlain's own friends and allies. 

Mr. Gladstone was always magnanimous and 
forgiving in his personal dealings with those who 
had deserted him and had come to oppose him. I 
remember being present in the House of Commons 
when a curious and a touching little scene took 
place. Mr. Austin Chamberlain, son of Mr. Joseph 
Chamberlain, had made a speech in opposition to 
some policy- or other of Mr. Gladstone, who was 
still Prime Minister. Mr. Gladstone came to reply 
on the whole debate, and he paused to make a 
special comment upon Austin Chamberlain's 
speech. The elder Chamberlain leaned forward 
in his seat with a look of something like irritated 
expectancy. Could it be that he thought Mr. 
Gladstone was about to say something scornful or 
severe of the young man's speech ? Could it be 
that he really fancied such was the sort of use 
a political opponent would naturally make of such 
an opportunity ? Mr. Gladstone broke into a few 



HOME RULE 377 

sentences of what was evidently the most sincere 
praise of young Chamberlain's speech, and he spoke 
in some touching words of the pleasure which it 
must give to the father of the speaker. Mr. 
Chamberlain seemed to me, I must say, to be 
deeply affected. He quite lost his composure for 
a moment ; it was plain that he was deeply moved. 
Mr. Gladstone had not used the opportunity in 
the way that he had apparently expected, but for 
a very different and far more congenial purpose. 

Now there was, of course, nothing particularly 
wonderful in the fact that a great statesman and 
orator should praise a speech delivered by the son 
of a prominent and a bitter political opponent. 
Austin Chamberlain's was really a brilliant speech, 
full of the happiest promise. But still the genuine 
warmth and the sincere gladness of Mr. Gladstone's 
panegyric, following on Mr. Chamberlain's attitude 
and expression of what I have called irritated ex- 
pectancy and succeeded by Mr. Chamberlain's col- 
lapse into sincere apologetic emotion, made up for 
me a picture which I could not help regarding as 
an illustration of the ways of the two men. I may 
say that on no occasion have I ever known Mr. 
Gladstone to behave with anything but magnanim- 
ity and generosity, even to the bitterest of his politi- 
cal opponents. 

It is so in public life, it is so in private life. 



378 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

During the fiercest struggles with the Irish party 
in the days of obstruction, Mr. Gladstone once per- 
emptorily interfered with Mr. Forster, who was 
then Irish Secretary, on behalf of one of the Irish 
members who was cast into prison as what was 
called a suspect. This Irish member was a. medi- 
cal man by profession, and he held a position on 
one or two medical boards under the control of 
Dublin Castle. Mr. Gladstone knew little or 
nothing about this Irish member, and certainly 
knew nothing about the fact that the medical man, 
when he was put into prison, had also been de- 
prived of his public appointments. A debate on 
the subject was started by the Nationalist members, 
and during the course of the debate Mr. Gladstone 
came in and learned for the first time that this 
double penalty had been inflicted on the Dublin 
physician. His quick and eager sense of justice 
revolted against the idea. Let it be clearly borne 
in mind that the men who were cast into prison 
under the Suspect Act, as I may call it, were not 
convicted of any offence, were not charged with 
any offence, nor was there any intention of making 
any charge against them. They were simply sus- 
pected of being persons whose sympathy with the 
National movement might render it dangerous for 
them to be left at large while there was still trouble 
in the air. Mr. Gladstone had clearly understood 



HOME RULE 379 

that such men were put into prison for the safety of 
the community and for their own safety as well ; 
that they were " interned," if I may use the expres- 
sion, at the discretion of the authorities, but that 
when they were allowed out of prison they were to 
suffer no further privation or stigma. It was plain 
to Mr. Gladstone's just and generous mind that this 
Irish Nationalist member ought not to be deprived 
of any public appointment which he had held be- 
fore his imprisonment. He was a medical man 
of high standing in his profession and had always 
borne an honorable character in public and in 
private. His only offence was that he was an 
ardent Nationalist, and it was not even asserted 
that an ardent Nationalist might not also be a skil- 
ful medical practitioner. All this came home to 
Mr. Gladstone's mind while he sat listeninp; to the 
debate, the whole subject of which was new to him. 
He remonstrated earnestly with Mr. Forster, who 
was in certain moods a particularly obstinate man. 
Mr. Gladstone's sense of justice, however, prevailed 
over Mr. Forster's obstinacy, and the released pris- 
oner was restored to his public appointments. 

I could go on mentioning cases such as this to 
illustrate the breadth of Mr. Gladstone's mind and 
the total absence of any feeling of personal ill-will 
in his dealings with his opponents. I have no 
doubt that he continues to this day to be on terms 



38o THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

of personal friendship with Mr. Chamberlain. Mr. 
Disraeli at one time tried him a great deal, but 
that was because Mr. Disraeli never seemed to Mr. 
Gladstone to have anything serious in him, never 
seemed to have any faith in one cause or another, 
and appeared to be led and governed altogether by 
political ambition. Where the treasure is there the 
heart will be, and the treasure in that case, Mr. 
Gladstone doubtless believed, was mere political 
success. Therefore he sometimes appeared to me 
to be rather hard on Disraeli — probably all the 
more hard upon him because he saw Mr. Disraeli's 
tremendous capacity for commanding admiration 
and leading people astray. Mr. Chamberlain, of 
course, had no gifts which could compare in show 
and splendor with those of Disraeli, but still he was 
a keen, capable, and unsparing man, and at the 
moment of great political crisis he contrived to stab 
Mr. Gladstone in the back. Yet I never heard Mr. 
Gladstone, in public or private, say an unfair word 
of Mr. Chamberlain. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

" THE LONG day's TASK IS DONE " 

I HAVE put, for convenience, my general account 
of the two Home Rule measures of Mr. Gladstone 
into a single chapter. The Home Rule measure 
of 1886 was defeated because of the secession of 
a number of Liberals who found, or professed to 
find, their strong objection to the Bill in the fact 
that it excluded Ireland from representation in the 
Parliament at Westminster. The second Home 
Rule measure was introduced to meet and amend 
that special objection. Ireland was to have a rep- 
resentation of eighty members in the Imperial 
House of Commons, that number being her exact 
representation in proportion to the population. 
But these Irish members were not to vote on any 
measure exclusively affecting Great Britain. By 
this alteration of his former measure Mr. Glad- 
stone hoped to be able to get over two sets of 
objections. The first was the objection of those 
who complained of Ireland's being taxed by the 
Imperial Parliament without representation. The 
second was the objection of those who complained 

381 



382 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

that, whereas the English members could not in- 
terfere in the affairs of Ireland, Irish members 
might come over to the Imperial Parliament and 
interfere in the affairs of England, 

In the interval between the rejection of the first 
Home Rule measure by the House of Commons 
and the introduction of the second scheme many 
things had happened. There had, for example, 
been a great split in the Irish party which had led 
to the deposition of Mr. Parnell from the leader- 
ship. Many of the best friends in England of 
Home Rule were afraid that the principle had, 
for our time at least, received a death-blow. Mr. 
Gladstone was not of any such opinion. When 
he became Prime Minister for the fourth time he 
at once resumed his policy of Home Rule. 

On Monday, the fourteenth of February, 1893, 
Mr. Gladstone introduced his bill "for the better 
government of Ireland." The Bill was met with 
every possible method of obstruction. Mr. Glad- 
stone's energy, enthusiasm, and eloquence tri- 
umphed over all opposition. The debates on the 
various stages of the Bill spread over practically 
the whole of the session. The Bill at last was 
carried through the House of Commons, and in 
September was sent up to the House of Lords. 
The House of Lords disposed of it after four 
nights' debate, and rejected it by a majority of 



-'THE LONG DAY'S TASK IS DONE" 383 

more than ten to one. Mr. Gladstone might, on 
the whole, have been well content. The peers 
reject every great reform measure which comes 
before them for the first time. They never resist 
for long. They yield when they see that public 
opinion is determined. 

Many of Mr. Gladstone's followers insisted then 
that he ought to have appealed to the country at 
once on the one question of Home Rule. Mr. 
Gladstone, no doubt, had good reasons for not 
appealing to the country once again just at that 
moment. But the strength of the Government 
was undoubtedly diminished by the defeat of the 
Home Rule Bill and by the inaction that followed 
that defeat. The Government got into conflict 
with the House of Lords on two or three measures 
of purely social and municipal interest. There 
did not seem force enough left in the House of 
Commons to thrust these measures on the Heredi- 
tary Chamber. In one instance Mr. Gladstone 
himself withdrew a bill because it seemed hopeless 
to press it on against the hostile action of the 
House of Lords. There was a sort of languor, 
almost a kind of despondency, spreading itself like 
dry-rot among the ranks of the Liberal party. A 
keen observer mio-ht well have seen that a crisis 
of some sort was near. A crisis was indeed near, 
much nearer than most of us then imagined. 



384 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

The House of Commons adjourned on the 
twenty-first of September, 1893, for a very short 
recess. Mr. Gladstone, who had been unflagging 
in his attendance at all the sittings, determined 
that the House must meet again on the second of 
November. The House did so meet, and, with 
only a short interval of Christmas holidays, sat 
up to the fifth of March, 1894. Mr. Gladstone 
had been enjoying a short holiday at Biarritz, a 
favorite holiday place of his, and he came back 
to the House at the end of February. 

During his absence persistent rumors had been 
going about in London to the effect that he had 
made up his mind to resign his office as Prime 
Minister. These assertions were contradicted now 
and again, in a guarded sort of way, by persons 
who professed to have Mr. Gladstone's authority 
for the contradictions. Meanwhile a good many 
of us were allowed to know that Mr. Gladstone's 
mind was, at all events, gradually and earnestly 
turning toward a decision for his early resignation. 
Yet the outer public somehow thought little of the 
rumors, and perhaps found it almost impossible 
to believe that there could be in our time a House 
of Commons without Mr. Gladstone. 

Mr. Lucy has described the occasion, on the 
first of March, 1894, when Mr. Gladstone made his 
last speech at the table of the House of Commons 



''THE LONG DAY'S TASK IS DONE 



385 



in the capacity of Prime Minister. " While the 
House," says Mr. Lucy, " was crowded to its full- 
est capacity, it did not surely know what was 







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^^p«:»iiS5 ^ 


^P^^S^^B 






llJ 




1^ pl^^^ >»- 


'*% '^^t^Kt 






ij 


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^^9^H 




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William E. Gladstone 

(From a photograph taken by Mr. John Moffat) 

happening. The air was full of rumors, but the 
immediate effect of the speech was to discredit 
the supposition that resignation was imminent. 
That it had been decided upon and must take 



386 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

place at an early date was accepted as inevitable. 
There was, indeed, one passage forming the clos- 
ing words of this memorable speech that, read by 
the light of subsequent events, plainly indicated 
Mr. Gladstone's position — that of a knight who 
had laid down his well-worn sword, hung up his 
dinted armor, content thereafter to look on the 
lists where others strove. The House of Lords, 
in accentuation of an attitude long assumed, had, 
he said, within the last twelve months shown it- 
self ready not to modify but to annihilate the 
work of the House of Commons. ' In our judg- 
ment,' Mr. Gladstone said, slowly and emphatically, 
'this state of things cannot continue.' After a 
pause, necessitated by the vociferous cheering of 
the Liberals, he added, ' For me, my duty termi- 
nates with calling the attention of the House to the 
fact that it really is impossible to set aside, that we 
are considering a part, an essential and insepa- 
rable part, of a question enormously large, a ques- 
tion that has become profoundly acute, a question 
that will command a settlement and must at an 
early date receive that settlement from the high- 
est authority.' " That question was, of course, the 
jurisdiction of the House of Lords. 

The matter immediately before the House of 
Commons was not one of supreme importance, 
but still it involved a conflict between the Repre- 



"THE LONG DAY'S TASK IS DONE" 387 

sentative Chamber and the Hereditary Chamber. 
Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule scheme had been 
destroyed for the time by the action of the House 
of Lords, and his mind must have gone back to 
many a crisis when some great scheme of reform 
had been retarded in its movement by the same 
irresponsible authority. Observe that the House 
of Lords is not really capable of preventing any 
great measure from being carried in the end. It 
can only retard and obstruct, and it always gives 
way when pressure enough has been put on it to 
make it clear that the public are becoming im- 
patient of its intervention. Even if one could 
believe that the whole country belonged to the 
peers and the landlords, there would still be no 
justification for the existence and operation of the 
House of Lords, inasmuch as the peers always 
give way when public indignation becomes too 
strong to be resisted. 

Mr. Gladstone had fought against the House of 
Lords on many a momentous occasion of his pub- 
lic life. It was but fitting that he should take 
leave of public life with an announcement that 
the time had come when the country must pro- 
nounce a decisive opinion on the position of the 
House of Lords. Yet it was not understood in 
the House of Commons, at least by the majority 
of those who listened to him, that that was to be 



388 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Mr. Gladstone's last utterance in the assembly 
where he had been conspicuous for so many years. 
As Mr. Lucy puts it, " Looking on the upright 
figure standing by the brass-bound box, watching 
the mobile countenance, the free gestures, noting 
the ardor with which the flag was waved, leading 
to a new battlefield, it was impossible to associate 
the thought of resig-nation with the Premier's 
mood." 

So indeed it happened that in the House of 
Commons few were those who knew that that 
was Mr. Gladstone's farewell to public life. If 
that had been known the excitement and emotion 
in the House would have been something without 
precedent or parallel in our times. 

But there was nothing of a farewell tone about 
the speech, nothing tragic, nothing even purposely 
pathetic, and, as Mr. Lucy says, the flag seemed to 
be waved leading to a new battlefield. Some of us, 
of course, were in the secret, or at least were 
vaguely forewarned of what we had to expect. 
Shortly after Mr. Gladstone sat down I met Mr. 
John Morley in one of the lobbies. " Is that, 
then," I asked, " the very last speech ? " " The 
very last," was his reply. " I don't believe one 
quarter of the men in the House understand it 
so," I said. " No," he replied, " but it is so all the 
same." 



"THE LONG DAY'S TASK IS DONE" 389 

Another man, not Mr. Gladstone, would prob- 
ably on such an occasion have made it plain that 
he was giving his final farewell to the assembly 



duJ-^-uM^..^ 



L^ i-,//4i- 




Mr. Gladstone's Handwriting — From an Address to his Electors 

which he had charmed and over which he had 
dominated by his eloquence for so many years. 
Lord Chatham certainly would not have allowed 
himself to pass out of public life without convey- 



390 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

ing to all men the idea that he spoke in Parliament 
for the last time. But Mr. Gladstone, with all his 
magnificent rhetorical o-ift and with all his dra- 
matic instinct, had no thought of getting up a 
scene, had no thought of any tableau to precede 
the fall of the curtain. He was no doubt think- 
ing only of the duty which must soon devolve 
upon the Representative Chamber — the duty of 
putting some limitation on the intervention of the 
House of Lords. Engrossed with that thought, 
and easfer to stir the House of Commons to a 
full sense of its responsibilities and its duties, he 
not unnaturally conveyed the idea to the majority 
of his audience that he was to lead a new cam- 
paign. 

The mind of at least one of his listeners went 
back to the day when, more than thirty years be- 
fore, he had denounced the conduct of the House 
of Lords, in preventing the repeal of the tax on 
paper, as a "gigantic innovation," which the Rep- 
resentative Chamber was bound to resist. As he 
had taken upon himself the leadership of that 
movement on the part of the House of Commons 
in i860, it was not unnatural that by the kindling 
energy of his manner when he spoke in that March 
of 1894, he should have led most people to believe 
that he was ready for the battle again. Certainly 
there was nothing in his apparent physical energy, 



"THE LONG DAY'S TASK IS DONE" 391 

in his voice, in his gesture, in his manner, to indi- 
cate that he found himself unfitted for any further 
Parliamentary struggle. 

More than twenty years before he had formally 
resigned the leadership of the Liberal party on 
the ground that he was outworn and could no 
longer continue the fight. Yet on the first mo- 
ment when a great public crisis aroused the 
attention of the civilized world he had come 
back, almost as a matter of course, to take his 
place at the head of the struggle. It could not, 
therefore, be wondered at if many men in the 
House of Commons, seeing the extraordinary vi- 
tality of the Prime Minister, should have thought 
that there was no greater reason why he should 
give up political life at the age of eighty-four than 
there had proved to be when for a short time he 
forsook it at the age of sixty-four. 

The truth is that we had all grown into the 
way of regarding Mr. Gladstone as a sort of being 
endowed with immortal youthful ness and vitality. 
The outer public, even the majority of members 
of the House of Commons, did not know that the 
sight of those luminous eyes had been fading and 
dimming and that the statesman's hearing power 
had been giving way so much as to make official 
work a serious trial to him. We heard his voice, 
we noted his energy of movement and gesture. 



392 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

we were delighted by his thrilhng eloquence, and 
we could not understand all in a moment why 
he should wish to retire from the field of his 
fame. 

So, in the theatric sense, I should describe his 
last speech as a dramatic failure. Numbers of 
men lounged out of the House when the speech 
was over, not having the least idea that they were 
never again to hear that voice in Parliamentary 
debate. Yet I for one do not . regret that Mr. 
Gladstone thus took his leave of political life. I 
am not sorry that there were no fireworks ; that 
there was no tableau ; that there was no melo- 
dramatic fall of the curtain. The orator making 
his closing -speech was inspired by his subject 
and was not thinking of himself. One single 
sentence interjected in the course of the speech 
would have told every one of his hearers what was 
coming and would have led to a demonstration 
such as has probably never been known in the 
House of Commons. It did not suit with Mr. 
Gladstone's tastes or inclinations to lead up to 
any such demonstration, and therefore while he 
warned the House of Commons as to its duties 
and its responsibilities he said not a word about 
himself and about his action in the future. Par- 
liamentary history lost something no doubt by the 
manner of his exhortation, but I think the char- 



"THE LONG DAY'S TASK IS DONE" 393 

acter of the man will be regarded as all the greater 
because at so supreme a moment he forgot that 
the noblest Parliamentary career of the Victorian 
era had come at last to its close. 

On Monday, the fifth of March, 1894, I had 
what I may be allowed to call my last official inter- 
view with Mr. Gladstone. He wrote me a letter 
on the Saturday before, asking me to call and see 
him at twelve o'clock on Monday, He was still 
occupying his official chambers in Downing Street. 
He received me, as was his wont, with the greatest 
kindness and friendship. We talked over many 
things, the past, the present, and the future. He 
was full of brilliant talk, as he always could be 
when in the mood, and he wandered off away 
from the track of our subjects many times to bring 
in reminiscences of the past and of men whom he 
had known and of political storm and stress in 
which he had had a serious part to play. I could 
not but admire the wonderful elasticity of the mind 
which could thus, for a moment at least, shake 
itself quite free from the troubles of the present 
and the immediate future and find a relief and a 
refuo^e in even the casual memories and anecdotes 
of much earlier days. We talked, as was natural, a 
good deal about Home Rule. He expressed a wish, 
such as he had often expressed before, to see some 
of us Home Rulers at Hawarden Castle and to talk 



394 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



over political prospects in a friendly and confiden- 
tial way. He referred again and again to Mr. 
Parnell, and spoke of him, as he ever had done, 




The Official Residence on Downing Street 

(From a photograph by Mr. Monger of London) 

with kindness and w^ith consideration. Mr. Par- 
nell's, he said, had been a really great career ; one 
of the greatest in modern times, considering the 
limited materials with which he had to work ; and 



"THE LONG DAY'S TASK IS DONE" 395 

he expressed, as I had often heard him express 
it before, his deep regret that such a career should 
have come to so tragic a close. I remember well 
that he found fault with one course of action taken 
by the Irish members, still under Mr. Parnell's 
leadership, while we were opposing one of Mr. 
Gladstone's own coercion measures. 

The story is interesting in so far as it illus- 
trates the singular fairness and candor of the 
great statesman. He found no fault whatever 
with us for opposing to the very uttermost his 
coercion policy. That he quite understood to be 
a part of our national duty. What he did complain 
of was that when an English Liberal member pro- 
posed an amendment, making a certain division of 
the bill stronger and harsher than the Government 
intended to make it, and when the Government 
determined to oppose the amendment, we did not 
come and vote with them in opposition to it. The 
truth was that Mr. Parnell and a number of other 
Irish members, including myself, had been sus- 
pended, as the technical phrase went, from voting 
in the House for a certain limited time because 
of our renewed acts of obstruction, and, as w^e 
could not vote, our colleagues naturally declined 
to take any part in the division. Mr. Gladstone 
talked with the most perfect good-humor about 
the whole affair and only dwelt upon it as the one 



396 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

sole incident in the long struggle about which 
he thought he had a fair right to grumble at the 
conduct of the Irish members. He expressed to 
me over and over again his absolute conviction 
that the cause of Home Rule for Ireland was des- 
tined to succeed and before very long. No meas- 
ure, he said, of really national importance which 
has passed by a safe majority through the House 
of Commons can ever be long retarded by the 
resistance of the House of Lords. 

In words which, though really conversational, 
were as impressive to me as human eloquence 
could make them, he bade me tell my colleagues 
that his heart was ever with the success of our 
cause and that he prayed for that success and gave 
it his blessino^. I have not been often so much 
moved as by those words. I took leave of Mr. 
Gladstone as if I had been leaving some being 
who belonged to a higher order of the world than 
the commonplace existence of every day. I passed 
out into St. James's Park, feeling as though even 
the sunshine and the grass and the trees and the 
lake were commonplace things after such a fare- 
w^ell. I had one regret, and I cherish it still. I 
wish I had asked Mr. Gladstone to give me some- 
thing from his desk or his table, — a pen or a pen- 
cil or a book or anything whatever, — just as a 
mark and memory of the occasion. I have many 



"THE LONG DAY'S TASK IS DONE" 397 

letters from him, and he has sent me several times 
some pamphlet which he has written or in which 
he has felt a special interest. But I should like to 
have got something from him in memory of that 
last official interview. The meeting was, to use 
Carlyle's expression, not easily to be forgotten in 
this world. 

Since then I have not seen Mr. Gladstone. The 
House of Commons is nothing like the place that 
it was when he was there. The Irish people feel 
that they- have lost in him a friend and a guide, 
whose place is never likely to be filled again in our 
time. I felt all that as I was taking leave of him 
on that memorable day. Since the time of Charles 
James Fox Ireland never had had a distinct and 
an avowed friend amongst the men who made up 
administrations or led oppositions in the English 
House of Commons until we came to the days of 
Mr. Gladstone. Nor had Fox himself obtained 
even the chance of making such a move on our 
behalf as was made and sustained by Mr. Glad- 
stone. I do not ask all my readers to agree with 
my views about Home Rule, but I do ask them to 
take what I say as the sincere expression of Irish 
opinion with regard to the English statesman who 
risked everything — place, power, popularity, all 
that could make life dear to any ambitious man 
— for the sake of serving a country so poor and so 



398 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

lowly that it could offer for such services no reward 
whatever but the reward of gratitude. I was think- 
ing of all this when I came out of the ofificial resi- 
dence in Downing Street and passed into St. 
James's Park, and felt as if I had been looking on 
at the fall of a dynasty. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

Gladstone's busy leisure 

Then came a season of what would have seemed 
to be extraordinary energy and overwork for any 
other man, but which was only a season of rest for 
Mr. Gladstone. He turned his attention once 
again to theology. He wrote letters, essays, and 
even books on theological subjects, nor in the 
meantime did much escape him in politics or even 
in liofht literature. He allowed the outer world to 
know, although in becoming guarded fashion, his 
opinion on this or that measure which was under 
discussion in Parliament, or on this or that subject 
of political controversy outside Parliament. He 
did not volunteer these opinions. He certainly 
did not obtrude them on the public, but if he were 
asked for a few words of counsel or of guidance he 
gave them in a helpful, friendly, modest sort of 
way. He read books of passing interest, even 
novels, and he did not disdain to say what he 
thought of them if they contained anything worth 
thinking: about at all. He seems to me like an- 
other Charles the Fifth sitting down in his cell in 

399 



400 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

the convent of St. Yuste, withdrawn to all seeming 
from the outer world and its doings, and yet keep- 
ing himself closely informed of everything that was 
going on and taking the keenest interest in the 
movements of that political life from which he had 
withdrawn himself forever. 

We in London followed all his goings and his 
comings, his writings and his sayings, with an 
attentiveness which never relaxed. He went to 
Biarritz, he went to the Riviera, he talked with 
French public men and Spanish public men, he 
received friends at Hawarden, he kept up his 
position there as an active promoter of every 
eood local movement. We were all delio-hted to 
hear that his sight had grown better and that his 
hearing had grown better. He sometimes buried 
himself in books and would work on a stretch 
ten hours in the day. He made short voyages 
and appeared to enjoy them with a perfectly 
youthful activity for the reception of new impres- 
sions. 

Perhaps I cannot better illustrate the variety 
of his occupations than by mentioning the book, 
apparently of the most solid importance, which he 
wrote on Bishop Butler and Bishop Butler's the- 
ology, and the article on Sheridan which he con- 
tributed to "The Nineteenth Century" in June, 
1896. I am not qualified to say anything about 




Catherink Gladstone 



GLADSTONE'S BUSY LEISURE 401 

the work on Bishop Butler, but I know at least 
that it created a great sensation in England and 
that it was discussed and debated and replied to 
by reviewers and writers without end. The arti- 
cle in " The Nineteenth Century " on Sheridan 
takes up a subject concerning which I am better 
qualified to form an opinion. The article was 
suggested by the work of my friend, Mr. Fraser 
Rae, "already well known," Mr. Gladstone says, 
" to political readers as the author of a useful 
volume in which he associated the name of 
Sheridan wdth those of Fox and of Wilkes," and 
who brought out a recent biography of Sheridan 
for the purpose of proving that full justice had 
never been done in this country to the memory 
of the author of the " Begum Speech " and the 
" School for Scandal." 

Mr. Gladstone thoroughly agrees with the views 
of Mr. Fraser Rae. " The path of a biographer," 
he says, " may be a flowery path, but it is beset 
with snares, especially as to the distribution of 
his materials and the maintenance of a due pro- 
portion in presenting the several aspects of his 
subject. These, in the case of Sheridan, were 
especially numerous and diversified. He was a 
dramatist, a wit, and something of a poet. He 
won his wife by duelling and by a trip which 
might be called an elopement. In society he 



402 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

quickly grew to be a favorite, almost, indeed, an 
idol. He came into Parliament by means which, 
if open to exception in point of purity, were due 
to no man's favor, but thoroughly independent. 
While a representative of the people he sustained 
in a marked manner the character of a courtier, 
though the scene of his practice lay at Carlton 
House and not at Windsor." Carlton House, I 
should say, was the residence of the Prince Re- 
gent, afterwards George the Fourth. " Here have 
been enumerated parts enough to fill the life of 
an ordinary, nay, of something more than an 
ordinary man. But interwoven with these and 
towering high above them were his claims as an 
orator, a patriot, and a statesman. It is in these 
respects, and especially in the two last, which are 
the most important of them, that, as Mr. Rae 
considers, justice has not been fully done to 
Sheridan. His main purpose, therefore, is one of 
historical rectification. No aim is of more dura- 
ble consequence, and I cannot but think that in 
a great measure it has been attained." 

I do not want to quote too much of this most in- 
teresting article. It would be interesting and worth 
studying if it had been written by a perfectly ob- 
scure author. There would not seem to be much 
on the surface of Sheridan's character which could 
attract a man so profoundly earnest as Mr. Glad- 



GLADSTONE'S BUSY LEISURE 



403 



stone. But Mr. Gladstone goes far beneath the 
surface and boldly brushes aside the commonplace 
and conventional notions of Sheridan as a mere 
writer of plays and unpaid jester to the Prince 
Regent, and shows him in his true rank as an 
orator of the highest Parliamentary class, as a 
statesman and as a patriot. 

I cannot forbear from quoting a few closing 
lines which Mr. Gladstone devotes to the memory 
of Mrs. Sheridan, the wonderful singer Miss Lin- 
ley, who has often been called the Saint Cecilia 
of her day. " It is impossible," says Mr. Glad- 
stone, " to close this rapid and slight sketch with- 
out one word at least on Mrs. Sheridan. One of 
the strong titles of Sheridan to the favor of pos- 
terity is to be found in the warm attachment of 
his family and his descendants to his memory. 
The strongest of them all lies in the fact that he 
could attract and could retain through her too 
short life the devoted affections of this admirable 
woman, whose beauty and accomplishments, re- 
markable as they were, were the least of her 
titles to praise. Mrs. Sheridan was certainly not 
strait-laced ; not only did she lose at cards fifteen 
and twenty-one guineas on two successive nights, 
but she played cards, after the fashion of her 
day, on Sunday evenings. I am very far from 
placing such exploits among her claims on our 



404 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

love. But I frankly own to finding it impossible 
to read the accounts of her without profoundly 
coveting, across the gulf of all these years, to 
have seen and known her. Let her be judged 
by the incomparable verses (presented to us in 
these volumes) in which she opens the flood-gate 
of her bleeding heart at a moment when she 
feared she had been robbed, for the moment, of 
Sheridan's affections by the charms of another. 
Those verses of loving pardon proceed from a 
soul advanced to some of the highest Gospel at- 
tainments. She passed into her rest when still 
under forty, peacefully absorbed for days before 
her departure in the contemplation of the coming 
world." 

It seems to me that there is somethino- in the 
tender and melancholy compassion and toleration 
of these kindly words not unworthy of the pen 
of Thackeray. Mr. Gladstone wrote, among other 
things, an article on minor poets, of whom he 
must have known a good many in his time ; but, 
as we have already seen, he had known Words- 
worth in his early days, and he knew Tennyson 
and Browning to the end of either man's life. 
Nobody could have admired more than I did Mr. 
Gladstone's versatility and activity as an orator 
and a statesman, but I confess that I am almost 
equally impressed by the healthy vitality of the 



GLADSTONE'S BUSY LEISURE 405 

man who, at the age of ei'ghty-six, having reth-ed 
altogether from ParUamentary hfe, can yet enter 
with so profound and practical an interest into 
almost every question which concerns men and 
women, and can absolutely refuse to exile himself 
from any manner of controversy, theological, liter- 
ary, or political, on which there was a word to 
be said in season. In truth, we never lost Mr. 
Gladstone, even when he had no longer a place 
in the House of Commons or on the political 
platform. 

On Monday, June i, 1896, the public of Eng- 
land were penetrated by an unexpected sensation. 
It came in the form of a statement made by Mr. 
Gladstone and communicated to the world by the 
Archbishop of York, on the subject of the unity 
of Christendom and the validity of Anglican 
orders. It ought to be said in explanation of 
Mr. Gladstone's letter that the question of unity 
or union among the Christian churches had been 
lately pressed upon public attention by Pope Leo 
the Thirteenth. The Pope had addressed a letter 
to the English people, appealing for something 
like a reunion with the Church of Rome. The 
letter was full of interest, was grave and dignified 
and sympathetic. A movement, having for its pur- 
pose the same general result, had been going on for 
some time among clergymen and laymen who be- 



406 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

longed to one section of the Anglican Church. Lord 
Halifax, who was the chairman of a great Angli- 
can organization, the English Church Union, had 
taken a prominent part in the movement. He 
went to Rome, had interviews with the Pope and 
with the Pope's councillors, and he endeavored 
to ascertain how far Rome on the one hand and 
the English Church on the other were willing to 
advance toward a basis of union. One of the 
questions which came up for discussion was that 
of the validity of Anglican orders ; that is, 
whether Rome would or could recognize the 
right of an Anglican clergyman to seek, as such, 
admission to the clerical order in the Roman 
Church, if any change of opinion should lead him 
that way. 

Mr. Gladstone's letter concerns itself almost alto- 
gether about that one part of the whole subject, but 
his utterances are full of interest, even as regards 
the grave possibilities of the greater subject. " The 
question of the validity of Anglican orders," he 
says, " might seem to be of limited interest if it 
were only to be treated by the amount of any 
immediate, practical, and external consequences 
likely to follow upon any discussion or decision 
that might now be taken in respect to it. For 
the clergy of the Anglican communions, number- 
ing between thirty thousand and forty thousand. 



GLADSTONE'S BUSY LEISURE 407 

and for their flocks, the whole subject is one of 
settled solidity. In the Oriental Churches there 
prevails a sentiment of increased and increasing 
friendliness toward the Anglican Church, but no 
question of actual intercommunion is likely at 
present to arise, while, happily, no system of 
proselytism exists to set a blister on our mutual 
relations. In the Latin Church, which from its 
mao-nitude and the close tissue of its ors^aniza- 
tion, overshadows all Western Christendom, these 
orders, so far as they have been noticed, have been 
commonly disputed, or denied, or treated as if they 
were null. A positive condemnation of them, if 
viewed dryly in its letter, would do no more than 
harden the existing usage of reordination in the 
case, which at most periods has been a rare one, 
of Anglican clergy who might seek admission to 
the clerical order in the Roman Church." 

It ought to be explained that the particular 
object of Mr. Gladstones interest was the re- 
port, widely spread over the world, that the ques- 
tion of the validity of Anglican orders was then 
actually the subject of a formal investigation by 
the authorities at the Vatican. On this point 
Mr. Gladstone goes on to say that " very differ- 
ent indeed would be the moral aspect and effect 
of a formal authorized investigation of the ques- 
tion at Rome, to whichever side the result miaht 



408 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



incline. It is to the last degree improbable that a 
ruler of known wisdom would at this time put in 
motion the machinery of the Curia for the purpose 
of widening the breach which severs the Roman 

Catholic Church 
from a com- 
munion which, 
though small in 
comparison, yet 
is extended 
through the 
large and fast 
increasing range 
of the English- 
speaking races, 
and which repre- 
sents in the re- 
ligious sphere 
one of the most 
powerful nations 
of European 
Christendom. 
According to my reading of history, that breach is 
indeed already a wide one ; but the existing schism 
has not been put into stereotype by any anathema or 
any expressed renunciation of communion on either 
side. As an acknowledgment of Anglican orders 
would not create intercommunion, so a condemna- 




WiLLiAM Henry Gladstone 

(From a photograph by Maull & Fox) 



GLADSTONE'S BUSY LEISURE 409 

tion of them would not absolutely excommunicate ; 
but it would be a step, and even morally a stride, 
toward excommunication ; and it would stand as a 
practical affirmation of the principle that it is wise 
to make the religious differences between the 
churches of Christendom more conspicuous to 
the world, and also to bring them into a state of 
the highest fixity, so as to enhance the difficulty 
of approaching them at any future time in the 
spirit of reconciliation. From such a point of 
view an inquiry, resulting in a proscription of 
Anglican orders, would be no less important than 
deplorable." 

Mr. Gladstone goes on to say that the infor- 
mation which he had received from Lord Halifax 
dispelled from his mind every apprehension of 
that kind, and convinced him that if the investi- 
gations of the Curia did not lead to a favorable 
result, wisdom and charity would in any case 
arrest them at such a point as to prevent their 
becoming: an occasion and a means of embitter- 
ing religious controversy. 

Mr. Gladstone then sets out very frankly his 
own point of view. " And now I must take 
upon me to speak in the only capacity in which 
it can be warrantable for me to intervene in a 
discussion properly belonging to persons of com- 
petent authority. That is the capacity of an 



4IO 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



absolutely private person, born and baptized in 
the Anglican Church, accepting his lot there as 
is the duty of all who do not find that she has 
forfeited her original and inherent privilege and 

place. I may 
add that my case 
is that of one 
who has been 
led by the cir- 
cumstances, 
both of his pri- 
vate and of his 
public career, 
to a life-long and 
rather close ob- 
servation of her 
character, her 
fortunes, and 
the part she has 
to play in the 
grand history 
of Redemption. 
Thus it is that her public interests are also his per- 
sonal interests, and that they require or justify what 
is no more than his individual thought upon them. 
He is not one of those who look for an early restitu- 
tion of such a Christian unity as that which marked 
the earlier history of the Church. Yet he even 




William Henry's Son, present heir 

(From a photograph by Webster of Chester) 



GLADSTONE'S BUSY LEISURE 411 

cherishes the beHef that work may be done in that 
direction, which, if not majestic or imposing, may 
nevertheless be legitimate and solid ; and this by 
the least as well as by the greatest. It is the Pope 
who, as the first Bishop of Christendom, has the 
noblest sphere of action; but the humblest of the 
Christian flock has his place of daily duty, and ac- 
cording as he fills it, helps to make or mar every 
good or holy work." 

Mr. Gladstone declares that he " has viewed with 
profound and thankful satisfaction, during the last 
half-century and more, the progressive advance of a 
erreat work of restoration in Christian doctrine. It 

o 

has not been wholly confined within his own 
country to the Anglican communion, but it is best 
that he should speak of that which has been most 
under his eye. Within these limits it has not been 
confined to doctrine, but has extended to Christian 
life and all its workings. The aggregate result has 
been that it has brought the Church of England 
from a state externally of halcyon calm, but in- 
wardly of deep stagnation, to one in which, while 
buffeted more or less by external storms, subjected 
to some peculiar and searching forms of trial and 
even now by no means exempt from internal dis- 
sensions, she sees her clergy transformed (for this is 
the word which may advisedly be used), her vital 
energies enlarged and still growing in every direc- 



412 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

tion, and a store of bright hopes accumulated that 
she may be able to contribute her share, and even 
possibly no mean share, toward a consummation of 
the work of the Gospel in the world. Now the 
contemplation of these changes by no means un- 
fortunately ministers to our pride. They involve 
large admissions of collective fault. This is not 
the place, and I am not the proper organ, for expo- 
sition in detail. But I may mention , the wide- 
spread depression of evangelical doctrine ; the 
insufficient exhibition of the person and the work 
of the Redeemer ; the coldness and deadness, as well 
as the infrequency, of public worship ; the relegation 
of the Holy Eucharist to impoverished ideas and to 
the place of one (though doubtless a solemn one) 
among its occasional incidents ; the gradual efface- 
ment of Church observance from personal and daily 
life. In all these respects there has been a pro- 
found alteration, which is still progressive, and 
which, apart from occasional extravagance or indis- 
cretion, has indicated a real advance in the disci- 
pline of souls and in the work of God on behalf of 
man. . . . 

" Certain publications of learned French priests," 
Mr. Gladstone went on to say, " unsuspected in 
their orthodoxy, which went to affirm the validity 
of Anglican ordinations, naturally excited much 
interest in this country and elsewhere. But there 



GLADSTONE-S BUSY LEISURE 413 

was nothing in them to rufflo the Roman atmos- 
phere, or invest the subject in the circles of the 
Vatican, with the character of administrative 
urgency. When, therefore, it came to be under- 
stood that Pope Leo the Thirteenth had given his 
commands that the vahdity of Anghcan ordinations 
should form the subject of an historical and theo- 
logical investigation, it was impossible not to be 
impressed with the profound interest of the consid- 
erations brought into view by such a step, if inter- 
preted in accordance with just reason, as an effort 
toward the abatement of controversial differences. 
There was, indeed, in my view, a subject of thought 
anterior to any scrutiny of the question upon its 
intrinsic merits which deeply impressed itself upon 
my mind. Religious controversies do not, like 
bodily wounds, heal by the genial course of nature. 
If they do not proceed to gangrene and to mortifi- 
cation, at least they tend to harden into fixed facts, 
to incorporate themselves with law, character, and 
tradition, nay, even with language; so that at last 
they take rank among the data and presuppositions 
of common life, and are thought as inexpugnable as 
the rocks of an iron-bound coast. . . . 

" What courage must it require in a Pope, what 
an elevation above all the levels of stormy parti- 
sanship, what genuineness of love for the whole 
Christian flock, whether separated or annexed, to 



414 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

enable him to approach the huge mass of hostile 
and still burning recollections in the spirit and for 
the purpose of peace ! And yet, that is what Pope 
Leo the Thirteenth has done, first in entertaining 
the question of this inquiry, and, secondly, in de- 
termining and providing, by the infusion both of 
capacity and impartiality into the investigating 
tribunal, that no instrument should be overlooked, 
no guarantee omitted for the possible attainment of 
the truth. He who bears in mind the cup of cold 
water administered to ' one of these little ones ' will 
surely record this effort, stamped in its very incep- 
tion as alike arduous and blessed. But what of the 
advantage to be derived from any proceeding which 
shall end or shall reduce within narrower bounds 
the debate upon Anglican orders ? I will put it 
upon paper, with the utmost deference to authority 
and better judgment, my own personal and indi- 
vidual, and, as I freely admit, very insignificant 
reply to the question. 

" The one controversy which, according to my 
deep conviction, overshadows and, in the last re- 
sort, absorbs all others, is the controversy between 
Faith and Unbelief. . . . This historical transmis- 
sion of the truth by a visible Church with an 
ordained constitution is a matter of profound 
importance, according to the belief and practice of 
fully three-fourths of Christendom. In these three- 



GLADSTONE'S BUSY LEISURE 415 

fourths I include the AngHcan churches, which are 
probably required in order to make them up. It is 
surely better for the Roman and also the Oriental 
Church to find the churches of the AnHican sue- 
cession standing side by side with them in the 
assertion of what they deem an important Christian 
principle than to be obliged to regard them as mere 
pretenders in this belief and pro tan to reduce the 
' cloud of witnesses ' willing and desirous to testify 
on behalf of the principle. ... I may add that 
my political life has brought me much into contact 
with those independent religious communities 
which supply an important religious factor in the 
religious life of Great Britain, and which, speaking 
generally, while they decline to own the authority, 
either of the Roman or the National Church, yet 
still allow to what they know as the Established 
religion no inconsiderable hold upon their sym- 
pathies. In conclusion, it is not for me to say what 
will be the upshot of the proceedings now in prog- 
ress at Rome. But be their issue what it may, 
there is, in my view, no room for doubt as to the 
attitude which has been taken by the actual head 
of the Roman Catholic Church in regard to them. 
It seems to me an attitude in the largest sense 
paternal, and while it will probably stand among 
the latest recollections of my lifetime, it will ever 
be cherished with cordial sentiments of reverence. 



4i6 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



of enduring interest. 



of gratitude, and of high appreciation." The letter 
was dated Hawarden, 1896. 

I have quoted much of Mr. Gladstone's letter 
because it is a document full of living and also 

The earnest feeling which 
he threw into 
the question is 
proved by the 
evidence of the 
physical labor it 
must have given 
a man of his 
years to write 
with his own 
hand a letter 
which occupied 
two columns of 
the London 
daily papers. 
Of course it did 
not escape con- 
troversy and censure. One of the London daily 
papers, counted amongst those most devoted to 
Mr. Gladstone, dryly said that " the Christian re- 
union which begins at Rome will inevitably lose 
as much at one end as it gains at the other." The 
allusion is to the attitude of some leading Noncon- 
formists toward Mr. Gladstone's letter. 




Herbert Gladstone 

(From a photograph by Russell & Sons) 



GLADSTONE'S BUSY LEISURE 417 

Dr. Guinness Rogers, one of the most distin- 
guished and influential Nonconformist leaders and 
teachers in Great Britain, indignantly denied that 
Nonconformists had any sympathy with a state- 
established religion. Dr. Rogers declared that 
upon his sympathy the Established Church had 
not the very faintest hold. He honored real Chris- 
tian men in the State Church, but for a religious 
estabHshment he had no sympathy and no respect. 
He declared himself puzzled to know how a great 
and subtle intellect like Mr. Gladstone's could oc- 
cupy itself for a single moment as to whether the 
Pope did or did not recognize the validity of Angli- 
can orders. What meant, he asked, this silly crav- 
ino- for recognition from Rome ? What right have 
these Anglican clergy, who belonged not to a pri- 
vate church, to betray the liberty purchased by this 
country by this weak and childish sighing after rec- 
ognition by the Pope .? Many other distinguished 
Nonconformist ministers talked in the same strain, 
and at one meeting of Nonconformists the mention 
of Mr. Gladstone's name was received with some 
hisses, which were promptly rebuked by the voice 
of the chairman and by the cheers of the great 
majority of the audience. I am not going into 
the controversy, but it is only right to record the 
fact that a serious controversy did arise. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

PENULTIMATE 

Mr. Gladstone was beset by letters, calling on 
him to give some explanation of the position which 
he had taken up with regard to the Pope and the 
Anglican orders. I may quote a few sentences 
from one letter, which will speak for many, a let- 
ter from a well-known Baptist minister, the Rev. 
Walter Wynn. After paying some well-deserved 
compliments to the profound interest and the abil- 
ity of Mr. Gladstone's letter, the writer goes on to 
say : " As a Nonconformist minister, however, I am 
perplexed by this latest demonstration of your gen- 
ius. If your reasoning is right, the whole basis 
upon which Nonconformist Church policy is built 
up is unscriptural and insecure. Any one of less 
importance and ability than yourself could not have 
produced upon my mind the shock such a thought 
gives me. I venture in all sincerity to ask would 
you, if your heart's desire were fulfilled, see the 
whole of Christendom under the sway and ruler- 
ship of the Pope ? If not, why discuss his opinion 
as to the validity of Anglican orders, or his sanc- 

418 



PENULTIMATE 



419 



tion in particular of any form of ministry? May I 
ask also whether your reference to our Churches 
as ' separate religious communities ' implies a dog- 
matic dislike of them ? " 

Mr. Gladstone in his reply said : " The tone of 
your kind letter commands my sympathy. But I 
do not yet comprehend the mental process by 
which my paper has been alarming to any one. My 
proposition is simply this — the more we, the sepa- 
rate bodies of Christians, are able to acknowledge 
as sound the truth or usages held by any of us, the 
more is our common Christianity strengthened. I 
will endeavor to illustrate. 

" The Church of Rome recognizes as valid (when 
regularly performed) baptism conferred in your 
communion and ours. By this acknowledgment 
I think that Christianity is strengthened in face of 
non-Christians. For baptism read orders (for the 
purpose of the argument), and the same proposition 
applies, though unhappily in this case only to us, 
not to you. No harm that I can see is done to 
any one else. The settlement of this matter is a 
thing of the likelihood of which I cannot even form 
an opinion. But I honor the Pope in the matter, 
as it is my duty to honor every man who acts as 
best he can with the spirit of courage, truth, and 
love. My answer to your question is in the nega-- 
tive," 



420 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

I think there can be no doubt in the mind of any 
fair-minded person that in writing this letter on the 
AngHcan orders Mr. Gladstone acted, as he had 
done in so many other cases, the best he could 
with the spirit of courage, truth, and love. Con- 
sidering his peculiar position, his letter might be 
set down by some as a rash utterance, but then it 
has to be remembered that many of the noblest 
words he ever uttered might be regarded as rash 
utterances. Probably it did not occur to him to 
think that he, a believer in the Anglican Church, 
could desire to see the whole of Christendom under 
the sway and rulership of the Pope. What Glad- 
stone always did desire was, that the Christian 
Churches should all draw as near to one another as 
possible, and should make a common stand against 
irreligion, against infidelity, against atheism, and 
against indifference. Mr. Gladstone did not see 
any enemy to his faith in any Christian Church or 
sect or denomination. He saw the enemies of 
o;ood in boorish ignorance and in cultured indiffer- 
ence and agnosticism. With him Christianity was 
a living force, and more than that, a force essential 
to the true life of everything. In this spirit, and in 
none other, he gave forth his utterances on the An- 
glican orders and the possibility of a nearer ap- 
proach between the Church of Rome and the 
Church of England. 



PENULTIMATE 42 1 

The Pope shortly after issued an Encyclical 
which was undoubtedly in great part meant as a 
reply to Mr. Gladstone's letter. Nothing decisive 
and final was said as to the subject of the Angli- 
can orders, but, of course, the Pope made it clear 
that on the part of Rome there could be no 
compromise of religion or principle. Indeed, the 
letter was little more than a continuation of a 
former Encyclical addressed directly by the Pope 
to the English people. In that Encyclical the 
Pope made an appeal full of friendliness and even 
affection to the English people, inviting them to 
return to the religion of the Roman Catholic 
Church. But he did not offer any concession or 
compromise on any matter of importance. The 
more recent Encyclical merely emphasized the 
same views. This was exactly what any thought- 
ful person might have expected. The vital prin- 
ciple of the Roman Catholic Church is, of course, 
the maintenance of its own doctrines. It is cer- 
tain that Mr. Gladstone's letter and the Encyclical 
in reply to it could only tend to produce a kindlier 
feehng between Anglicans and Roman Catholics. 
But I am much mistaken if the letter and the 
Encyclical did not bring about a feeling of sore- 
ness and of deep regret among many of the 
Nonconformists of Great Britain. Their historical 
position, too, it is easy to understand. But I am 



422 



THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 



sure that some of them, at least, did not quite 
comprehend or do full justice to the generous 
impulse of Mr. Gladstone. 

Following out, as I have been trying to do, 

the story of Mr. 
Gladstone's ca- 
reer, I may own 
that I am less 
concerned about 
the public possi- 
bilities of his let- 
ter than with the 
extraordinary 
evidence it gives 
of that indomi- 
table interest in 
the great affairs 
of humanity 
which was ever 
and always the 
predominant in- 
stinct of his nat- 
ure. Age could 
not wither that ^reat emotion in him. He saw a 
chance, a possibility, of uniting two of the great 
forces of Christianity in a common war against 
irreligion and indifference, and he came to the 
front of the field and called on all who felt with 




Rev. Stephen Gladstone 

(From a photograph by Elliott & Fry, London) 



PENULTIMATE 



423 



him to follow him. That is simply the meaning 
of his letter. It was but another testimony, if 
any such were needed, to his absolute sincerity. 

On Friday, June 26, 1896, there was a peculiarly 
interesting ceremonial at Aberystwith, in Wales, in 
honor of the installation of the Prince of Wales 
as Chancellor of the new Welsh University. The 
Prince of Wales, in his new capacity, received an 
address from the University Court and was pre- 
sented with a key of the university, the seal and 
a copy of the Charter and the statutes. Among 
the recipients of honorary degrees were the Prin- 
cess of Wales and Mr. Gladstone. A description 
of the scene when the Prince of Wales presented 
his wife with the degree said that " Her Royal 
Highness, rising to confront the Prince face to 
face, the Chancellor clasping his wife's hand, was 
an interesting episode, and it seemed to amuse 
immensely the Princess of Wales, who had a diffi- 
culty in keeping her countenance while the Prince, 
speaking in Latin, as is the ceremonial of such 
occasions, said, ' Altissima Principissa, admitto te 
ad gradum doctoris in musica et ad omnia privi- 
legia hujus dignitatis.' When Mr. Gladstone's 
turn came," said the same report, " the cheering 
was so fast and furious that the Chancellor had 
to wave his velvet gold-laced mortar-board with 
authority before he could gain a fair hearing." 



424 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

There was a luncheon given afterward at which 
the Prince of Wales made a most sympathetic 
and graceful reference to the honor conferred on 
Mr. Gladstone. " You will all join with me," the 
Prince said, " I am sure, in thanking the veteran 
statesman and eminent scholar, Mr. Gladstone, 
who, notwithstanding his advanced age, has under- 
taken a journey, necessarily fatiguing, in order to 
pay a compliment to the University of Wales and 
to myself as its Chancellor. I may truly say that 
one of the proudest moments of my life was when 
I found myself in the flattering position of being 
able to confer an academic distinction upon Mr. 
Gladstone, who furnishes a rare instance of a man 
who has achieved one of the highest positions as 
a statesman and at the same time has attained 
such distinction in the domain of literature and 
scholarship. His translation of the Odes of Hor- 
ace would alone constitute a lasting monument to 
him even had he not accomplished so much be- 
sides which has rendered him illustrious. Nor do 
we extend a less warm welcome to Mr. Gladstone's 
ever faithful companion and helper during the 
many years of his busy life." 

Mr. Gladstone, of course, has his home in Wales, 
and therefore his position as recipient of honors 
from the University of Wales through the voice 
of the Prince of Wales was a peculiarly appro- 



PENULTIMATE 425 

priate, and must have been a very grateful, cere- 
monial. Mr. Gladstone had already been loaded 
with honors of all kinds, but I am sure that no 
honor was ever more welcome to him than this 




Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, with all the Children and Grandchildren 

(From a photograph by Mr. Watmough Webster, of Chester) 

tribute from the Welsh University, given through 
the medium of the heir of the Crown who bears 
the title of the principality. The reception offered 
to Mr. Gladstone by the crowd as he returned to 
his special train was something which might have 



426 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

given a new throb of feeling to even the proudest 
of men. To Mr. Gladstone who had always borne 
his honors meekly, it must have been a peculiarly 
touching and thrilling welcome. The long polit- 
ical struggle was over and done. The heat of 
opposition this way and that had gone out forever, 
and Mr. Gladstone had none left but friends on 
both sides of the political field. Probably that 
ceremonial, that installation of the Prince of Wales 
as Chancellor of the Welsh University, was the 
last occasion on which Mr. Gladstone would con- 
sent to make an appearance on a public platform. 
It was a graceful close to such a great career ; an 
honor paid to a scholar by the people in whose 
midst he lived ; a tribute to a statesman's genius 
and to a noble life. 

Later on Mr. Gladstone came back into London 
and into London society for a short time, not to 
a platform but to a great ceremonial occasion. It 
was on July 22, 1896, when he and Mrs. Gladstone 
came to be present at the marriage of one of the 
daughters of the Prince and Princess of Wales 
to Prince Charles of Denmark. Mr. Gladstone, 
it is not too much to say, shared public attention 
with the Sovereign and the young bridegroom 
and bride. Everybody was delighted to see how 
well he was looking and how vivid and active 
was his personal interest in every incident that 



PENULTIMATE 



427 



belonged to the occasion. Many noted with deep 
regret that the sight of one of his eyes was sadly 
dimmed, — those eyes that long were so piercing 
and so thrilling in their gaze and even in their 
glance, — but, so far as the ordinary conditions of 
health were concerned, the great old statesman 
seemed to have moulted no feather. The day 
after the royal wedding he went back to Hawar- 
den — a long journey — and declared himself to be 
not in the least wearied by his travel to London, 
or by his attendance at the protracted and formal 
ceremonial. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

"the grand old man" • 

It is well understood that Mr. Gladstone on his 
retirement from public life received from the Sov- 
ereign the offer of an earldom with, of course, a 
seat in the House of Lords. Mr. Gladstone grate- 
fully and gracefully declined the title and the posi- 
tion. No one could have been surprised at his 
decision. He had already made a name which no 
earldom or dukedom or any other rank could have 
enhanced. " Posterity," says Lord Macaulay, " has 
obstinately refused to degrade Francis Bacon into 
Viscount St. Albans." In the same sense, the 
contemporaries and the posterity of William Ewart 
Gladstone would have declined to accept for him 
the title of Earl of Hawarden or Earl of any 
other place. He is fixed in the affection and the 
admiration of his countrymen as William Ewart 
Gladstone. 

One title he has indeed received by the universal 
accord of the public of England and the public of 
all the world. I do not know, and I suppose no- 
body knows, who invented this title for him, but it 

428 



"THE GRAND OLD MAN" 429 

was conferred upon him and it will always remain 
with him and with his memory. He was called the 
Grand Old Man and the Grand Old Man he always 
will remain. Never was there a character which 
more aptly deserved that title, sacred to age and to 
grandeur of genius, of purpose, and of career. 

I do not know whether English Parliamentary 
history records greater doings of any man. In dif- 
ferent paths of political work other men may have 
been as great as he. So far as one can judge by 
the writings of contemporaries there may have been 
orators and debaters in Parliament who vv^ere equal 
to him. Probably Fox was his equal in Parlia- 
mentary debate. There is a magnificent phrase of 
Henry Grattan's, himself hardly surpassed as a 
ParHamentary orator, in which he describes the 
eloquence of Fox as "rolling in resistless as the 
waves of the Atlantic." I have often thought of 
that description when listening to some of Mr. 
Gladstone's greatest speeches. I have said to my- 
self : — This makes me understand the force and the 
meaning of Grattan's superb phrase. This is in- 
deed eloquence rolling in resistless as the waves of 
the Atlantic. The elder Pitt was probably as great 
an orator as Mr. Gladstone. The younger Pitt was 
probably his equal in the statelier forms of declama- 
tion. But not Fox nor Chatham nor William Pitt 
had anything like Mr. Gladstone's capacity for con- 



430 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

structive legislation, and the resources of informa- 
tion possessed by Fox or Chatham or Pitt were 
poor indeed when compared with that storehouse 
of knowledge which supplied Mr. Gladstone's intel- 
lectual capacity. 

Mr. Gladstone was possessed through his life 
with an eager passion to do the right thing at all 
times. Sometimes, no doubt, he took a wrong 
view of things ; but never was swayed by any but the 
most rightful motives. No human interest was in- 
different to him, and the smallest wrong as well as 
the greatest aroused his most impassioned sympa- 
thy and made him resolve that the wrong should be 
righted. I have mixed with most of Mr. Glad- 
stone's contemporaries, his political opponents as 
well as his political followers, and I have never 
heard a hint of any serious defect in his nature and 
his character, or of any unworthy motive influenc- 
ing his public or private career. Defects of tem- 
perament, of manner, and of tact have, no doubt, 
been ascribed to him over and over again. He 
was not, people tell me, always successful in con- 
ciliating or playing up to the weaknesses of inferior 
men. He was not good, I am told, at remember- 
ing faces and names. In this peculiarity he was 
unlike what we all used to believe of the great 
Napoleon, who never, it once was the common be- 
lief, forgot a face or a name. Later historians, how- 



"THE GRAND OLD MAN" 431 

ever, have corrected public opinion a good deal 
on this subject, and we now know that the great 
Napoleon was very carefully " coached " both as 
regards faces and names, and made many fine theat- 
rical effects on the strength of some quietly admin- 
istered hint. 

Such defects, however, in Mr. Gladstone's nature 
or temperament count indeed for little or nothing 
in the survey of his career. He was loved by his 
friends, he cannot but be honored, even by his 
political enemies — for personal enemies he never 
could have had. The name conferred on him, by 
nobody knows whom, will be borne by him to all 
time, and so long as the history of Queen Victoria's 
reign remains in the memory of civilization, he will 
still be "the Grand Old Man." 

The year now drawing to a close was made 
memorable to England and, indeed, to all the civi- 
lized world by the celebration of what was called 
the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria's reign — 
the sixtieth year of her sovereignty. Every civilized 
state took some share in the tribute of regard thus 
paid to Queen Victoria. Even the Nationalists of 
Ireland, who felt bound to take no part in the dem- 
onstrations, abstained for purely political reasons 
and had no thought of disrespect for the ruler, 
whom I have already described as the first and only 
Constitutional Sovereign of Great Britain. The 



432 THE STORY OF GLADSTONE'S LIFE 

Queen was seventy-eight during the year of the 
Diamond Jubilee, and was, therefore, some ten 
years younger than Mr. Gladstone or Pope Leo the 
Thirteenth. Mr. Gladstone's health did not allow 
him to take any conspicuous part in the Jubilee 
celebration; but we may be sure that no heart 
beat more fervently than his for the Queen, and 
for her happiness, and that of her family, and for 
the glory of the reign which he himself had done 
so much to make illustrious and successful. 



INDEX 



Aberdeen, Earl of, 52, 131, 136, 137, 

153, 175, 182, 184, 186. 
Acland, Sir Thomas, 22, 54, 55. 
Alabama Question, the, 296, 298, 302. 
Althorp, Lord, 42. 
Arabi Pasha, 349. 

Bernard, Montague, 298. 

Bethell, Sir Richard. See Westbury. 

Bismarck, Count von, 163. 

Bright, John, 2, 104, 105, 125, 149, 
161, 169-172, 182, 185, 199, 218- 
220, 226, 231, 233, 234, 236, 238, 
254-256, 262, 264, 266, 271, 273, 
301, 317, 326, 331, 337, 350. 

Brougham, Lord, 35. 

Bruce, James, 12. 

Bulwer, Edward. See Lytton. 

Bunsen, Baron, 84. 

Burke, Edmund, 305, 310, 311, 345. 

Burke, Thomas, 347. 

Butler, Bishop, and his Theology, 
402. 

Canning, Charles, 12. 

Canning, George, 7, 19. 

Carlyle, 236, 331. 

Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 347. 

Cavour, Count, 184, 216. 

Chamberlain, Austin, 380, 381. 

Chamberlain, Joseph, 337, 368, 372- 

377. 379-38i> 384. 
Chevalier, Michel, 219. 
Chinese Government and the " Arrow," 

190. 
Christchurch College, Oxford, 15, 19. 
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 321, 358. 
Civil "War in America, the, 216, 236. 



Cobden, Richard, 104, 125, 149, 158, 
161, 175, 182, 218, 219, 231, 233, 
234, 236, 238, 301. 

Cockburn, Sir Alexander, 125. 

Corn Law, 104, 106. 

Crimean War, the, 180, 181, 185, 217, 
332. 

Currie, Sir Donald, 357. 

Davis, Jefferson, 238. 

Derby, Lord, 19, 39, 154, 169, 173, 174, 
186, 259, 260, 265. 

Dickens, Charles, 223. 

Dilke, Sir Charles, 337, 355. 

Dillon, John, 344, 345. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, 40, 41,46, 47, 109, 
125, I49> 152, 154-166, 192, 199, 
217, 246, 254, 257, 259, 260, 262, 
264-266, 269, 271, 288-290, 298, 
299, 308, 315. 320, 321, 323, 326- 

330, 333, 336, 337, 351, 377. 384- 
Divorce Bill, the, 192. 
Don Pacifico, 116-119, 128, 142. 

Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, the, 149-153. 
Edinburgh, Duke of, 210. 
Emanuel, Victor, 216. 
Eton, 8, 10, 13. 

Fawcett, Mr., 293. 
F"erdinand, King of Naples, 131. 
Forster, William Edward, 318, 346, 
347, 382, 383- 

George I., King of Greece, 211. 
George IV., 61, 404. 
Gladstone, Herbert, 80. 
Gladstone, Sir John, 3, 4, 7, 25. 



433 



434 



INDEX 



Gladstone, Robertson, 5. 

Gladstone, William Evvart, an English- 
man by birth only, 2; derivation of 
his family name, 3; his father's 
third son, 4; at school at Seaforth, 
7; at Eton, 8, 11, 13; editor of the 
"Eton Miscellany," 14; at Oxford, 
Christchurch, 15 ; in the Union 
Debating Society, 17, 20, 21 ; as an 
athlete, 23; took his double first, 
24; went to Italy, 25; invited to 
enter Parliament for the borough of 
Newark, 28; took his seat, 31; per- 
sonal appearance in 1833, 31; im- 
portant figures in his first Parliament, 
33-43; his first speech, 44; his 
skill in figures, 48; a student of law, 
50; his first office, 52; his social 
life, 53-55; his literary work, 59; 
his re-election, 63 ; his first book, 
64, 65; his marriage, 78; his chil- 
dren, 80; in office again, 84; his 
first place in the Cabinet, 88; his 
retirement, 93; his interest in Ire- 
land, 97 ; an injury to his hand, 99; 
his views on the Irish Church, 102; 
becomes Colonial Secretary, 106; 
the fall of his party, 109; his elec- 
tion for the University of Oxford, 
1 10 ; his address to his electors. III; 
his speech in the Don Pacifico Em- 
broglio, 121-124; his speech on the 
death of Sir Robert Peel, 126; his 
letters from Naples, 1 29-141; and 
the reforms which followed, 142- 
144; in opposition to the Ecclesi- 
astical Titles Bill, 149-152; his long 
duel with Mr. Disraeli, 156-168; 
and Bright, 169-172; as Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, 175-179; the 
fall of the Coalition Ministry, 186; 
continued in office under Lord 
Palmerston, 187; resigned, 188; his 
opposition to the Divorce Bill, 192- 
197; his mission to the Ionian 
Islands, 198-215; Chancellor of the 
Exchequer again, 212, 216; and the 
Treaty of Commerce, 217-219; his 
repeal of tax .on paper, 220, 230; 



the leader of reform, 231-233; as a 
horseman, 234, 235; his opinions 
on the war in America, 236-240 ; 
no longer elected by the University 
of Oxford, 241-244; as a Liberal, 
245-249 ; supports popular suffrage, 
252; his Reform Bill of 1866, 254- 
259; and the Irish State Church 
again, 266-271 ; his return to office, 
271; on Irish land tenure, 272-279; 
on national education, 280; his re- 
form of other abuses, 282, 284; and 
the Irish University Question, 285- 
289; in undesired office, 295; the 
Alabama Question, 296-302; his 
defeat, 308; in retirement again, 
313; recalled by Disraeli himself, 
326-336; his Land Bill of 1873, 
339; and Home Rule, 341-349; and 
the Egyptian difficulty, 350-352; 
and the Transvaal, 353-355; and 
the Franchise Bill, 355; his broken 
health, 356-359; and Home Rule, 
360-384; his Bill of 1893, 384; his 
last speech, 388-390; the author's 
last interview, 395-400 ; his busy 
leisure, 401 ; his book on Bishop 
Butler, 402 ; his article on Sheridan, 
403-406 ; his letter on Anglican 
Orders, 407-418 ; his reply to the 
Rev. Walter Wynn, 421; the Pope's 
encyclical letter, 422-424; his hon- 
orary degree, 425; as the "Grand 
Old Man," 430-434. 

Gladstone, William Henry, 80. 

Glynne, Sir Stephen R., 77. 

Gordon, General, 351. 

Graham, Sir James, 149, 186, 188. 

Granville, Lord, 309, 313, 334, 335. 

Greek Kingdom, the, 202-215. 

Greville, Mr., 173, 174, 176. 

Grey, Earl, 40, 228. 

Halifax, Lord, 408, 41 1. 

Hallam, Arthur, 12. 

Hartington, Lord, 42, 318-322, 334, 

335. 355. 371. 378- 
Hawarden, 78, 79, 81, 100, loi. 
Herbert, Sidney, 15, 186, 188. 



INDEX 



435 



Hope, Beresford, 149. 

Houghton, Lord, 54. 

House of Commons, the, 32, 36, 40, 

46, 49, 57, 86, 189, 193. 
House of Lords, the, 41, 226, 229, 

230, 339-341, 3S8-390, 392. 
Howick, Lord, 44. 

Iddesleigh, Lord, 298. 

Inglis, Sir Robert H., no, 150. 

Ionian Islands, the, 198, 200, 201, 204- 

207. 
Irish State Church, the, 49, 53, 72, 

102, 103, 241, 266-271. 
Irish University Question, the, 285. 

Kinglake, Alexander, 12, 14. 
Knowles, James, 360. 

Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 16, 188, 

189. 
Lincoln, Lord, 28. 
Liverpool, 2, 4, 5, 30, 81, 222. 
Liverpool, Lord, 19. 
Louis Napoleon, 216-218. 
Lowe, Robert, 15, 254, 256, 259, 260, 

262, 264, 301, 317, 323. 
Lucy, Mr., 356, 385, 386, 390. 
Lyndhurst, Lord, 35. 
Lyttelton, Lord, 78. 
Lytton,Lord,40, 198-200, 202,256,289. 

Macaulay, Lord, 40, 65, 66. 
Macdonald, Sir John A., 298. 
MacGahan, 329, 330. 
Maguire, John Francis, 266-268. 
Manning, Henry Edward, 15, 23, 77, 

91, 314, 323. 
Marlborough, Duke of, 183. 
Martineau, Harriet, 240. 
Maurice, Frederick Denison, 21. 
Maynooth, College of, 89, 90, 93, 95. 
Mazzini, G., 144. 
Melbourne, Lord, 63, 75, 76, 337. 
Mill, John Stuart, 236, 238, 240, 255, 

257, 281, 287, 288. 
Milnes, Monckton. See Houghton. 
Morley, John, 368, 369. 
Murchison, Sir Roderick, II. 



Naples, 129-132, 137, 140-142. 
Newark, the borough of, 28, 63, 83, 

106, 107. 
Newcastle, Duke of, 26-29, 107. 
Newman, Francis W., 67. 
Newman, John Henry, 25, 66, 145, 

163, 323- 332. 
Northcote, Sir Stafford. See Iddes- 
leigh. 

O'Connell, Daniel, 36, 38, 50, 109, 

160, 342. 
Oxford Essay Club, 21. 
Oxford Movement, the, 145, 146, 148. 
Oxford Union Debating Society, 17, 

20, 21, 257, 

Parliament Reformed, the, 31, 34, 

43- 

Palmerston, Lord, 39, 41, 42, 75, 76, 
116, 118-122, 124, 128, 137, 148, 
150, 153, 186-188, 190-192, 212, 
218, 227, 230-233, 237, 243-246, 
250-252, 274, 316, 338. 

Parnell, Charles Stewart, 342-344, 347- 

349. 384, 397- 
Peel, Sir Robert, 34, 36, 37, 43, 48, 51- 

53, 63, 82-84, 89, 92, 94, 105, 106, 

108, 121, 126, 176, 180. 
Phoenix Park, 347-349. 
Pius IX., Pope, 145. 
Prime Minister, the, 40, 41, 283, 290. 
Prince of Wales, the, 425, 426, 428. 

Queen Victoria, 60, 62, 83, 116, 148, 
173, 186, 283, 290, 308. 

Rae, Fraser, 403, 404. 

Reform Bill of 1832, 27, 29, 30, 39, 40, 

43, 228, 253. 
Reform Bill of 1866, 253, 254, 259. 
Robbins, Alfred F., 22. 
Roebuck, John A., 120, 121, 149, 150, 

186, 188. 
Rogers, Dr. Guiness, 419. 
Rosebery, Lord, 20. 
Rothschild, Baron, 113. 
Russell, George W. E., his monograph 

on Gladstone, quoted, 3, 9, 13, 18, 



436 



INDEX 



53-55. 59> 84, 107, 112, 177, 184, 
274> 335. 35°- 
Russell, Lord John, 39, 41, 53, 82, 105, 
113, 125, 149-154, 161, 186, 212, 
215, 228, 245, 252-254, 259, 265,338. 

Salisbury, Lord, 19, 163, 355, 358. 
Selborne, Lord, 149. 
Sexton, 344, 345. 
Sheridan, 402-405. 
Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, 7. 
Stanley, Lord, 39, 40, 106, 1 19, 153. 
See also Derby. 

Tennyson, Alfred, 24. 
Tennyson, Frederick, 12. 
Thackeray, 66, 151, 406. 
Todleben, General, 184. 
Transvaal Republic, the, 352, 354. 



Trevelyan, Sir George, 376. 
Tupper, Martin Farquhar, 23. 

University of Oxford, the, 18, no, 190, 
240, 241. 

Villiers, Charles Pelham, 104. 

Walewski, Count, 153. 
Weg, the, 21, 22. 

Welhngton, Duke of, 33, 37, 51, 183. 
Welsh University, the, 425-428. 
Westbury, Lord, 195. 
Wilberforce, Samuel, 102, 242-244. 
William IV., 60, 62. 
Wordsworth, William, 55, 56. 
Wiseman, Cardinal, 77, 147, 151. 
Wordsworth, Charles Bishop, 18, 20. 
Wynn, Walter, 420. 



ALFRED LORD TENNYSON. 

A MEMOIR 

BY 

HIS SON. 
Two Vols. 8vo. Cloth. In Box. Price, $10.00, net. 



These volumes of over 500 pages each contain many letters 
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THE LETTERS OF MATTHEW ARNOLD, 

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Collected and Arranged by GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL. 
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